


there are entrances to Hell in every major city

by malfaisant



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-23 02:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16610252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malfaisant/pseuds/malfaisant
Summary: When the Guardians of the Galaxy answer a distress call in space, they find two survivors floating in the wreckage, but they’re not the two you think.(Or for a November solicits version, Marvel PresentsWhat If? Infinity War: Thor/Loki - What if Loki survives Thanos’ attack on the Statesman instead of Thor?)





	1. salvage

**Author's Note:**

> for spoiler-screening purposes, please see the end notes if you want to see the warnings.
> 
> Link to art coming soon!

Consider the nature of a liar.

A liar has many reasons for his dishonesty, and some of them may even be true. There are the lies he tells others—lies for when he wants to hurt someone, lies he needs to advance his goals, lies meant to coerce, or under coercion. There are the lies he tells to protect others from things they are better off not knowing. There are the lies he tells because he cannot help it. There are the lies he tells, just because he can.

Then there are the lies he tells himself. There are the lies that he doesn’t know are lies. There are the lies that must be believed, for when the alternative is so unthinkable that it cannot even be entertained. There are the lies he’s told so many times, that he ends up believing them too. The liar lies out of mischief, malice, hate, greed, guilt, self-interest, self-preservation, self-sacrifice, love.

But all lies, whatever the reason for them, are told to conceal truth.

*

In one reality, Loki dies, quickly, easily, with a sickening crack of bone and sinew. In one reality, his corpse falls to the ground before his brother, who weeps over him, and waits only for the void to take him too.

But what is truth in one universe is a lie in another. In this way, all truths are lies, somewhere, and all lies, truth.

*

A lonely signal travels across space.

_“This is the Asgardian refugee vessel Statesman. We are under assault. I repeat, we are under assault. Engines are dead. Life support failing. Requesting aid from any vessel within range…”_

The signal echoes across the cosmos _—_ frantic, desperate, sent out on every frequency available _—_ but traverses only a vast emptiness, for light-years and light-years.

_“Our crew is made up of Asgardian families! We have very few soldiers here. This is not a warcraft, I repeat, this is NOT a warcraft—”_

Untold years from now, the signal’s message will be received throughout the galaxy in various forms and various ways: the leaf of a tree, shaking against some invisible vibration in the air; a young astronomer, eyes turned skyward, who will with great diligence manage to translate a cry of help from the distant past; a ripple on the surface of an ocean, wholly indifferent to the suffering of gods and mortals alike.

With a crackle of static, the lonely signal loops and repeats. _“This is the Asgardian refugee vessel Statesman…”_

It travels through space, and will do so for countless years to come, for light-years and light-years and _light-years_ on end. The dying words of gods, traveling on bands of light and radiance, searching for someone to listen.

But there is no one around to hear it, for now.

Nothing around but void and stars.

*

Loki stumbles as yet another explosion rocks through the bowels of the ship, but catches his footing just in time to avoid a fall. If it can be helped, he would prefer to die on his feet, though he accepts that he may not have much of a choice, when the time comes.

He had been forced to give up his second-best bargaining chip early—much _too early_ ; the time bought with his brother’s agonized screams had not been enough for Loki to come up with another plan. The time bought by the Hulk’s easy defeat had not been enough. Even the time bought by Heimdall’s death had not been enough. He still has only the one plan.

From the shadows, Loki watches it unfold with a sort of numb, inevitable despair—his brother’s subjugation and imprisonment in rubble, Thanos attaining the second stone and affixing it to his gauntlet—and for a moment, his resolve wavers. And like a ripple, it continues to waver, moment after moment after moment.

Even the gods fear dying. A simple spell to confuse light into showing his enemies what he wants them to see, then another to bargain with the dark for safe passage through the hidden branches of Yggdrasil. These are spells he learned in his youth, spells he can cast as easily as he can conjure a knife out of thin air. He can still make his escape now, alone… but to what end?

The gods feared dying, yes, but there is nothing there about the death having to be their own.

“If I might interject,” Loki says as he steps forward, disentangling himself from the shadows, “If you’re going to Earth, you might want a guide.”

Sly, self-serving, a thin veneer of charm over desperation. A wide smile, all teeth and no sincerity. “I do have a bit of experience in that arena.”

Thanos regards him with bored curiosity. “Well, if you consider failure experience.”

“I consider experience, experience,” Loki sneers. He had considered groveling, just to round out the act, but had discarded it as excessive. Thanos knows that even at the end of his rope, Loki is too proud a creature to beg for his life, and might become suspicious if he laid it on too thick.

Countless eyes stare up at him from the ground, the mortal ruins of a once-great civilization. It would have been better if they were somehow staring at him accusingly, their rage forever preserved at the moment of death, but they are only blank now, glassy with lifelessness. Well, he will be joining them soon enough anyway, so perhaps it is no great matter.

“Almighty Thanos,” he says, his voice breathless with servility. “I, Loki, Prince of Asgard… Odinson…”

At this, he involuntarily turns towards his brother, and Loki’s eyes meet Thor’s for what he intends to be the last time. It puts steel back in is spine, before he turns back to Thanos. A simple sleight of hand behind his back, asking matter for quiescence, and then the knife is a steady, familiar weight in his hand.

“…the Rightful King of Jotunheim, God of Mischief, do hereby pledge to you my undying fidelity.”

He bows his head, blinking the sweat from his eyes, unable to help the second he takes to brace himself. Unflinching bravery has always been more his brother’s forte than his.

His hand darts forward, and the knife is even nearly at Thanos’ throat, before a shimmering wave of energy stays it in place.

It is hardly his most elaborate or well-thought out plan, a rather paltry last trick, but it is the only one he has left up his sleeve.

The foundation of any competent illusion is misdirection.

“Undying,” Thanos echoes gravely. “You should choose your words more carefully.”

_Oh, but I did._

Thanos grabs Loki’s outstretched arm and twists, until the knife falls from his hand. Then slowly, he raises the gauntlet, and Loki keeps his head raised, staring up at Thanos, frozen in fear—this, at least, he does not have to fabricate—the tall column of his neck exposed, almost invitingly—

Loki does not throw himself into the embrace of the gauntlet, but it is a near thing. Thanos grabs him by the neck and lifts him off the ground, his feet dangling uselessly above the sea of bodies as he writhes and chokes in the gauntlet’s hold. The metal burns like cold fire around his neck, even against his Jotun skin.

Thanos has let half of their people live; Thanos will let only half their people live. Thanos is a lunatic, obsessed with some perverse moral construction of balance and equilibrium, fancying himself to be a martyr. It is a thin disguise, just the sadism of a simple brute masquerading as a righteous crusade. Loki knows a liar when he sees one. He knows the ones, to borrow a parlance from Midgard, who have bought their own bullshit.

But in his lunacy Thanos has made rules for himself, reprehensible though they may be, and that makes Thanos predictable, which in Loki’s eyes is his only redeeming quality. Balance, he says. There are two sons of Odin, two princes of Asgard; a simple calculus indeed. There is no scenario in which both Loki and Thor make it out of this ship alive, so Loki will tip the scales for the only outcome he can live with, even if he won’t be doing so for very long.

Loki has always been the spare, after all. But where before this plain truth brought him only resentment and despair, it now gives him relief. He wonders, wickedly, if his bastard, one-eyed father might be proud of him in Valhalla, though he doesn’t expect to find out.

“You will never be a god,” he chokes out defiantly, and notes with satisfaction the scowl that crosses Thanos’ face.

At least Thor will live. As long as Thor will live.

Except—

Thanos tilts his head, his annoyed expression suddenly transforming to one of contemplation.

"What would be true punishment for a snake like you?" he asks, and the note of genuine curiosity in his voice slides like a dagger between Loki’s ribs.

_No—_

The Mad Titan smiles as Loki’s eyes widen in horrified comprehension. “Ah, yes. The tesseract isn’t the only thing you’d give up for your brother’s life, is it?”

Still with the hand around his neck, Thanos turns, carrying Loki like a ragdoll,  and starts to walk towards the front of the bridge.

Towards Thor.

"The universe demands balance. One son of Odin to die while the other survives,” Thanos continues conversationally, even as Loki struggles furiously in his grip, striking weakly at the gauntlet around his neck, even as his vision starts to blur, starts to darken at the edges. He may as well have been struggling against his brother’s old hammer, for all the good it did.

“I commend you, little trickster god.” Thanos pulls Loki’s face near his, forcing him to look into eyes that gleamed with cold insanity. “But you are not nearly as good a liar as you believe yourself to be.”

Loki gasps for air, his lungs heaving in agony. “Kill me! Two sons of Odin, two princes of Asgard!” he yells hoarsely. “I failed you, betrayed you, _I swear I will kill you if you don’t—_ ”

Thanos tightens his grip, cutting off the rest of Loki’s words. "Then the choice is clear,” he says, and beside him a subordinate steps forth and holds out the glaive for his master. “Death is a gift, and those who fail me should not be rewarded."

_No, no, no, NO, this was not the plan—he can’t—_

Loki’s eyes dart about wildly, panic racing through him like some wounded animal. With a certain, inevitable gravity, his eyes fix upon Thor’s solitary blue one. He is looking up at Loki now, his expression unreadable.

“Is this not something you desired once? Your brother on his knees, helpless at your feet?” Thanos asks. With his other hand, he takes the glaive.

The rubble restraining Thor shifts so that they held his arms wide apart, as in a crucifixion, leaving his chest bare. The gag over his mouth falls to the floor with a loud clang, but Thor doesn’t say anything, even as Thanos rests the tip of the blade over his heart.

_He will make you beg for death. He will make you long for it._

“Please,” Loki chokes out, a quiet, desperate sound, “Please kill me—”

“God of lies,” Thanos says, baring his teeth. “God of nothings.”

Thor opens his mouth. “Loki—”

But the glaive slides in and robs him of whatever it was he was going to say. Thor blinks, and looks down at the blade sticking out of his chest with a confused expression. His throat bobs as he swallows against a sudden mouthful of blood.

Thanos steps back and pulls the glaive free. Thor’s arms fall limply to his sides as the rubble holding him clatters to the floor. After a moment, Thor touches a hand to his chest, and stares as his fingers come away stained with red with a look of faint surprise.

Loki doesn’t have enough breath in his lungs to scream.

The grip around his neck falls away, and Loki drops in a crumpled heap before Thor. With great, hacking coughs, he crawls forward on his elbows towards his brother, who is still upright on his knees. Loki pulls himself up, despite that his limbs feel shot through with lead, and kneels in front of his brother, their gazes level. He holds Thor’s face in his hands, wipes away the grime from his cheeks.

Already Thor’s skin is pale, bereft of its usual golden radiance. Blood trickles from the corners of his mouth. He starts to pitch forward, but Loki holds him in place, steadying him. It is important that his brother not fall, he can’t fall, he mustn’t—

“Brother,” Loki says, in a voice torn to shreds, “brother, stay with me, please.”

He spreads his right hand over Thor’s heart, his fingers hot with his brother’s blood and his own magic. He takes no heed of the portal that opens behind him to take Thanos and his children away, or of the ship continuing to fall apart all around them. Deep fissures cut across the floor and travel up the walls, glowing bright, sinister violet, but Loki barely notices. Everything else is unimportant. Nothing else matters now except that Thor will not leave him.

Loki, unlike Thor, has never had to watch his brother die before.

*

The ship rocks again, the hangar bulkheads groaning violently as it strains to keep from collapsing. With the hull integrity compromised, the ship won’t last for much longer. Just a few more minutes, Valkyrie thinks. Ten at the most.

But then they are nearly done. She helps the last survivor onto the last remaining escape pod, an Asgardian girl less than a quarter-century old—the last of all that is left of Asgard, a pitifully small number, and Valkyrie wonders what sort of cosmic sin she must’ve committed that she is allowed to be reunited with her home, just in time to see it destroyed and its people annihilated. It must’ve been something grave, if not in this life, then in some previous life before this.

The worst of it all is that she will probably survive the end yet again.

It stings, knowing that they live only at the twisted mercy of their enemies. She wants to stay, she had wanted to fight. She is a warrior, with a warrior’s heart and a warrior’s honor and a warrior’s pride. She has all of these things still, tainted as they might be, and in spite of her best, centuries-long efforts to destroy them with alcohol. If nothing else she still has a sharp bloody sword. Will they never let her die for something she loves?

But her king had requested it of her, not an order but a promise. Thor had made her swear that she will do all she can to get what remains of their people to safety, what remains of Asgard, even if it feels like running away. _Get our people to safety,_ he had asked, clasping her hands in his. _The Valkyrie are sworn to protect Asgard, were they not?_

She braces a hand on the doorframe of the shuttle entrance, her breath catching on nothing. She does not know how the answer comes to her now, when it is almost certainly too late.

As Valkyrie, Brunnhilde must protect Asgard, but is her king not Asgard too?

“When you reach minimum safe distance, rendezvous with the other pods,” she says to Korg, who looks at her with surprise. “There should be enough fuel to get to a Kree outpost three clicks from here. Ask them for safe passage and make for Vanaheim, or Nornheim, whichever is closer.”

“You’re not coming with us?” Korg asks.

Brunnhilde shakes her head. “I’ve got to go back. If there’s even a small chance—” the words fail her. She has no time for hope, treacherous and unwieldy, but what choice does she have but to hope? “Protect my people,” she asks instead. “I must try to protect my king.”

Korg hesitates only for a second, but then he steps back and nods. With a press of the controls, Brunnhilde closes the hatch and turns away. Last time it nearly killed her, in all the ways it mattered—she will not survive running away again.

The shuttle launches into the void, and the Valkyrie sprints for the main deck. All around her the ship continues to fall apart, but she runs, through wreckage and flame, past walls of violet fire bursting through the cracks on the floor, licking up the walls and ceiling. By the time she reaches the bridge, soot-streaked and breathless, the metallic groan of the foundering ship is nearly a constant hum, pounding through her like her own pulse.

As she reaches the hallway that turns onto the main deck, Brunnhilde draws her sword.

But instead of enemies, she meets only devastation. Bodies carpet the floor like leaf-litter in autumn. She steps over corpses, young and old, whole families huddled together as death came upon them. Here and there the few soldiers Asgard had left, most just merchants and craftsmen who picked up a sword to fight a hopeless last stand. Her own grip on her sword tightens as she passes one in particular—Heimdall’s golden eyes, empty and dim, will haunt her for years to come.

At the front of the deck, she sees Loki, on his knees with his back to her. Then she registers the body he’s kneeling in front of.

The Valkyrie closes her eyes as an old pain lances through her heart. She recognises it as loss she’s experienced before, only once, and it nearly broke her then. But right now, there is still someone she can save.

“Loki!” She comes up behind him and grabs him by the shoulder, shaking it firmly, but Loki does not even seem to notice she is there. He is deathly pale, though his hands glow with brilliant green light. He holds them over Thor’s heart, chanting ceaselessly under his breath as he pours his seidr into a corpse, his own life-essence.

Brunnhilde shakes him again and screams, “Loki, we have to leave, now!”

The prince will not be moved. But even if they were to run now, the hangar is too far, if it is even still intact. She turns about frantically for something, anything, any lifeline at all. Violet fire is erupting all around them, the scene before her like some vision of Hel.

They are out of time, out of time—

Then the ship breaks, and everything falls apart.


	2. petrichor

A lonely signal travels through the void, light-years and light-years of it. It has a lot of void to go through. Space is vast, and mostly composed of nothing. The universe is mostly nothing. What sort of equilibrium is sustainable in a universe composed mostly of nothing? In all likely probability, no one will hear the tragic end of the _Statesman_ for quite some time.

(It is a stupid question from the start. Equilibrium is not a state of perfect order. A universe in perfect balance is a universe of total entropy. A universe of perfect symmetry is one of complete chaos.)

There are worse odds. For example, it is not quite as bad as 14,000,605 to 1. But then again, there are better odds too. This is the tragedy of uncertainty.

(All truths are lies somewhere.)

If the signal had been capable of it, it will have been quite surprised to find that, against some relatively improbable odds, it is picked up by the scanners of an M-class lightcruiser, just passing by.

*

Rocket yawns. “Why are we doing this again?”

“It’s a distress signal, Rocket,” Gamora says. “Someone could be dying.”

“I get that but... why are we doing it?”

Gamora rolls her eyes, though her foot continues to tap along to the tune of _Rubberband Man_. This is just her life now. That the former assassin is the one having to explain the concept of basic empathy to her teammates says volumes about it, none of them really all that flattering. She's also not had many chances to practice it herself, but then again, she’s working to change that.

Peter looks over his shoulder at Rocket. “Because we're nice,” Gamora feels her spirits lift a little, “and maybe whoever it is may give us a little chedda’ cheese for our efforts.”

Hello again, comfortably low expectations. “Which isn't the _point_.”

“Which isn't the point,” Peter parrots, pointing at her. “I mean, if he doesn't pony up…”

“We take his ship,” Drax says, waking up just in time to lower Gamora’s spirits through to the sub-basement levels.

“B-b-b-bingo!”

Gamora stares at Peter, who has just enough shame to look sheepish and give her a reassuring _we-won't-really-do-that_ gesture.

“We are arriving,” Mantis says.

Peter sits up in his chair, gently manoeuvring the controls. “Alright Guardians, let's not forget this might be dangerous, so let's put on our mean faces.” He throws a glance over his shoulder. “Groot, I’m not telling you again, put that thing away…”

The Guardians continue to bicker as the ship drops out of light-speed, but the scene that suddenly appears before them then is enough to quiet even Peter and Rocket.

A massacre, or at least the aftermath of one. Bodies float amidst a massive field of wreckage and debris, coated with thin layers of frost. Gamora feels the bottom of her stomach drop as she remembers what they had been able to make out of that garbled signal.

_“—life support failing. Requesting aid from any vessel within range——families—we have very few soldiers—not a warcraft, I repeat, this is NOT a warcraft—”_

The Guardians all jump in their seat in concert as one of the bodies hit the ship’s windshield with a dull thunk. A young woman rests against the glass, her long black hair floating as a cloud about her face. In one of her hands she is still holding onto the hilt of her sword.

As Rocket yells for someone to turn on the wipers, Gamora leans forward in her seat, frowning. That can’t have been movement. Hold on just a moment, is _she breathing_ —

Then the corpse opens her eyes.

*

After only a bit of arguing, the Guardians bring the unknown woman onboard.

“How the hell is this chick still alive?” Peter asks loudly as Gamora lays her flat on the table. Her body is freezing cold to the touch (and incidentally, also _a lot_ heavier than she looks), but the woman is definitely still breathing, her pulse faint but stubborn. With her black hair fanned around her head, her frame resplendent in gold-and-silver armour…

“She’s not a chick,” Gamora snaps. “She’s—she is a woman.” _A fierce, beautiful woman…_

“You’re a woman,” Peter says stupidly. Gamora glares at him.

Drax, surprisingly, is the one who speaks up next. “She is a _warrior_. An avenging angel! Just look at her glorious cape! And her sword, sharp enough to cut through a Vrellnexian’s carapace—”

“Yeah? Think it’d fetch a good price on Contraxia?” Rocket asks. With some effort, they had managed to pry the sword out of her grip earlier, and had set it to the side as a precaution.

“She is grieving,” Mantis says, laying a hand gently upon the woman’s forehead. “Angry. She feels immense guilt and sorrow… recent wounds, but also ancient loss…”

A ping at one the consoles interrupts Mantis, and she takes a step back, wiping tears from her eyes. Groot walks over and points at the screen. “I am Groot.”

“The scanners found one other life sign in the wreckage,” Rocket says, stepping up behind the sapling. “ _Geez_ , what are these bastards made out of?”

It’s short work bringing the other survivor aboard. They find him adrift in the ruins of the bridge, a tall man with dark hair and cobalt blue skin. Where the mysterious woman had felt cold in Gamora’s arms, this man feels as if he were made of solid ice.

“He’s not Kree,” Gamora says, kneeling beside where they’ve lain the body on the floor. “Or Centaurian…”

Peter frowns, gingerly poking at the man with his foot. “Wake her up. I don’t like the look of this other guy.”

Mantis nods and puts her hand on the woman’s forehead. “ _Wake_.”

The woman comes to with a cry and lunges forward with animal ferocity. Breathing hard as if she were mid-sprint, she holds onto the edge of a bulkhead for balance with one hand, and Gamora sees the other hover over her hip, where the hilt of her sword would have been.

After taking a few moments to get her breathing under control, she turns around, her expression confused and wary. “Who the hell are you guys?”

“ _Who_ —we’re the guys who just saved your space bacon!” yells Peter indignantly. “You’re _welcome_ , by the way.”

The Guardians stand on the other side of the table away from the woman, various guns and weapons pointed at the ready. Gamora comes between them and raises her hands placatingly, willing all of them to stand down.

“We mean no harm,” she says, and turns to the stranger. “My name is Gamora, and you are on the _Benatar._ We were passing by this quadrant when our ship picked up your distress signal.”

The woman frowns. “Distress signal?”

“It was from your ship, wasn’t it? The _Statesman_?” Gamora asks. “We found you floating in the wreckage.”

“Wreckage?”

“Look lady, are you just gonna repeat everything she says or what?” Rocket interjects, gesturing emphatically with a gun nearly the same size as himself. “We found you and your friend here half-dead in the vacuum of space, instead of _dead_ -dead in the vacuum of space. Wanna explain who you guys are and how that happened?”

“Friend?” The woman looks to the unconscious figure of her ally on the floor and gasps, her eyes widening. “ _Loki!_ ”

“He’s alive,” Gamora assures her. “What’s your name?”

“I… I am the Valkyrie. We are of Asgard, and the _Statesman_ was our ship.” The newly introduced Valkyrie rubs her face with her hand, and slumps down into a nearby chair, the fight seemingly having gone out of her, for now.

“As for what happened, we were attacked, but I’m gonna need a stiff drink before I get into that.” Valkyrie eyeballs the interior of the _Benatar_ , her expression faintly belligerent. “You got any booze on this ship?”

Peter raises an eyebrow, and lowers his gun a proportional amount. “A woman after my own heart.”

Valkyrie throws a sarcastic salute his way, before gesturing to the man on the ground, the one she had called Loki.

“And wake him up too. He’ll probably know more about the bastards that attacked us, and their leader,” she says, sprawling back into her seat, “some ugly purple guy called Thanos.”

*

_“Are there any other survivors?”_

_“You’re the only two we’ve found.”_

Loki returns to consciousness to the sound of female voices, and recognises only one of them. He is slow to come to, awareness and recollection coursing through him like a slow, gentle flood—it will drown him still, but only if he stays in place and lets the tide take him. As his mind pieces together the fragments of his broken memory, however, he is unable to find any compelling reason not to let it.

Eyes still closed, tears run down his cheeks, and a small gasp escapes him. The hand upon his brow that he somehow hadn’t noticed before pulls away. Somewhere in front of him, he hears a woman choke back a sob.

Slowly, Loki opens his eyes. He’s sitting on the floor against the wall in a small, dimly lit ship. A variety of humanoids are in the room with him, including the Valkyrie, who is currently speaking to a woman with verdant green skin. The voices had belonged to them, it sounds like.

As he brings up a hand to wipe the tear tracks from his face, he notes with faint surprise that his own skin is not his normally pale complexion, but the deep blue of his Jotun heritage.

Before his eyes, the blue begins to recede, collecting to a point in the center of his palm, until his form returns in its entirety to his usual Aesir guise.

His gaze flits to the woman on her knees before him just a few feet away, scanning her strange features: large black and pupil-less eyes, and on her forehead two glowing antennae that seem to move of their own accord. She pulls back her still outstretched hand and bows her head meekly.

“I am so sorry,” she says, her voice a small whisper. None of the others have noticed that Loki is conscious. “My captain has said I should wake you.”

 _She was in my head_ , he thinks. He remembers her presence in his mind like a thin mist of rain. “Are you a mind-reader?” he asks curiously.

“I am an empath. I can feel what you feel, and affect your emotions to some degree. It is how I was able to ease your mind to wakefulness.”

“And what do I feel now?”

She bites her lip nervously. “You feel great, terrible loss, so great that I sense it even when I am not touching you. You are numb from the violence of it.” Her bug-like eyes blink. “You are in shock.”

_sounds about right_

Loki nods.

“Mantis!” One of her colleagues step towards them, having finally noticed Loki and the empath woman’s interaction. “Why didn’t you tell us the prisoner was awake?”

“I’m a prisoner then?” Loki asks, tilting his head up. Absently, he touches his fingertips to the ring of livid bruises around his neck. “And here I was thinking I ought to be grateful for rescue.”

“We haven’t decided yet,” says the man with blond hair who had interrupted them. He looks at Loki warily, as one would regard a bomb you aren’t certain has been properly defused. Perhaps this man isn’t as stupid as he looks. “Who are you, and what’s your connection to Thanos?”

Behind the man, the Valkyrie steps forward, her mouth a tight, grim line.

Loki’s mouth quirks upward, not even a smile but a performance of a smile. “I am Loki of Asgard,” he says, “and Thanos killed my brother.”

He stays seated throughout their interrogation, hands folded neatly on his lap as he answers all their questions rotely, flatly, managing to sound almost pleasant—his history with Thanos, the attack on Xandar, the attack on the _Statesman._ Thanos’ quest for the infinity stones and the creation of the gauntlet. He tells them everything they ask him, without even asking any questions of his own.

“You used to work for Thanos?” asks the man who has since introduced himself as Peter Quill, or Star-Lord, as if the moniker is supposed to mean anything to Loki.

“We had an arrangement. He gave me an army of Chitauri to enslave Earth, in exchange for the tesseract.” Loki’s bland smile does not so much as flicker. “It didn’t work out.”

“He forced you to conquer Earth?” Mantis asks.

What an unusually kind question. “Oh no. I volunteered. His aims aligned with mine at the time.”

The Valkyrie is sitting in the corner with a flask, no doubt already self-medicating her latest trauma. “Why was the space stone on the ship, Loki?”

“Because I had it. I took it from Odin’s vault, before Surtur destroyed Asgard.”

“So you led him to us,” she says, swirling the drink in her flask.

“At the time I was more concerned with Thanos finding us without it.” Loki pauses, considering his next words with a bit more care. “I believe this is a mistake I have now dearly paid for.”

The Valkyrie throws back the rest of her drink and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

_you really are the worst, brother_

“The entire time I knew Thanos, he only ever had one goal.”

Loki’s eyes dart to the green woman; she has been so very quiet, this whole time.

“To bring balance to the universe by killing half of all life,” she continues. “He used to kill people planet by planet, massacre by massacre…”

“Including my own,” says the one known as Drax.

“If he gets his hands on all six infinity stones, he can do it with a snap of his fingers,” she says, lost in her own ruminations.

“How do you know so much about Thanos?” asks the Valkyrie.

Loki turns to the green woman, taking in her shock of red hair and her assassin’s gait. Her expression is suddenly one of tight-lipped shame, carefully hidden beneath cautious apprehension.

“Gamora, daughter of Thanos,” he says, before looking around the circle of stunned faces. “Am I correct?”

As one, the members of the crew watch as Loki got to his feet, a shipful of itchy trigger-fingers. Gamora stands her ground as Loki approaches, her face now totally impassive.

“You know me?”

As he comes to a halt before her, Loki lays a hand flat on his chest, and bows his head with a small flourish.

“I know _of_ you,” he says with brutal cheer. “A pleasure to make the acquaintance of the deadliest woman in the galaxy, although I must admit I know a few who would give you a run for the title. My dear adopted sister, for one, was the Goddess of Death, immortal and all-powerful.”

“Sounds like she would’ve gotten along with my dear father,” Gamora replies icily.

“One would think so, but they have a few important philosophical differences. For example, she believed conquering and genocide was something you did for fun, instead of the chore your father’s made of it. She wouldn’t stand for sharing power either.”

“Any chance we can pit them against each other, then? Where is your sister now?”

“Oh, my brother and I killed her. Her immortality was tied to our home planet,” he explains simply, “so we blew it up. That is how the whole of our people ended up on that ship.”

“ _Alriiight_ , we’re getting way off-topic here,” Quill interjects, stepping in between Loki and Gamora. “Let’s table the genocidal relatives discussion for later, and maybe have the ' _anyone else think we shouldn’t trust a guy who just admitted he tried to enslave my home planet'_ discussion?”

“You are Midgardian?” Loki looks Quill up and down. “Ah.”

“Midgardian? _Ah_? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Loki smiles. “I am the god of lies, Peter Quill. It could mean any number of things.”

“For the record, I’m from Missouri, not Midgardia or whatever—”

“Enough!” Gamora lays a hand on Quill’s shoulder, pulling him a step away from Loki. “We need to stop Thanos, which means we have to figure out where he’s going next.”

“Knowhere,” says Loki, and with no further elaboration, walks towards the navigation consoles.

“Hold up, what’s he planning on doing with _my_ ship—”

“Thanos must be going somewhere,” says Mantis, her hands fidgeting nervously against a room full of heightened emotions.

“No, not nowhere,” Quill tells her as he dogged after Loki, “ _Knowhere._  It’s a place—we’ve been there and it sucks.”

Loki feels a hand grab at his wrist, and the knife is in his hand before he even registers casting the spell. If Quill thinks he can touch him without consequence—

But it is the Valkyrie at Loki’s side, her face stern and serious as she intercepts his attack, crossing their daggers to a stalemate. Slowly, she takes her hand off his arm, and they both lower their weapons, though neither of them takes their eyes off the other.

The tense silence between them is broken when Gamora asks, “Loki, why would Thanos go to Knowhere?”

“Because the former king of Asgard sent the Reality Stone to the Collector for safekeeping.”

The Valkyrie lets out a disbelieving laugh. “Safekeeping? With the _Collector_?”

“I believe my dead brother’s reasoning was something along the lines of what better place to hide a needle than in a _very_ possessive haystack? If anyone has any complaints about it, I’m afraid you’ll have to take it up with him,” he says, and the Valkyrie smiles despite herself.

“So he’s already got two of the stones,” Gamora says, taking a step towards Loki and Valkyrie, “but how do you know he won’t go for one of the other four?”

“Just a simple matter of deductive reasoning. The time and mind stones are on Earth, and he‘s sent his other children to get those, best of luck to them; the task is not as easy as it sounds. That leaves just the reality stone left for Thanos to retrieve himself,” Loki explains with deliberate care. “No one knows where the soul stone is.”

A nearly imperceptible expression passes over Gamora’s face, just the slightest widening of her eyes, her lips parting slightly.

He did say nearly.

“My proposition is simple,” Loki says to Gamora. “As far as I understand it, this is a ship of people who want to kill Thanos, yes? We know where he’s going and what he’s after. You don’t have to trust me—in fact, I would recommend that you don’t—but right now my only priority is to avenge my brother and kill Thanos.”

“Now,” he turns to the rest of the crew with wide, wide smile, “does anyone here object to that?”  

*

The ship’s course is set for Knowhere, with only a few token objections from the rest of the Guardians. Quill, particularly, makes some more noise about Loki’s obvious untrustworthiness, but is forced to concede the point when he fails to come up with any alternatives. He makes up for it by remaining openly suspicious of Loki ( _”You better not try anything, I got eyes on the back of my head_ ”) and encouraging his crew to do the same, although they are rather more half-hearted about it.

Still, they give Loki wide berth, which he finds more than agreeable. He sits himself at the back of the ship, by the escape pod door. Mantis had given him a blanket, as well as something that almost resembled tea. It is warm and green, anyway.

“It’s not as if you didn’t go out of your way to make them as suspicious as possible.” The Valkyrie sets down next to him, a bottle in hand and a wordless gesture that asked if he wanted any in his almost-tea. Loki declines the offer. He feels as if he’s known her for years.

_(a peal of laughter, warm and full-bodied)_

_(the faint scent of rain and wet earth)_

“What’s your game here, Loki?” she asks, after a few moments pass in total silence.

“Game?”

“You answered all their questions, even if you went about it in the slimiest way possible. That’s mighty suspicious behaviour, Son of Laufey,” the Valkyrie says, as she takes a swig of her drink.

_silvertongue, forked tongue, trickster, lie-smith_

_oathkeeper?_

_yes_

_you promised fealty to me_

Loki shakes his head, trying to clear away the insistent throbbing just behind his eyes.

Try as the Valkyrie might to conceal it beneath a caustic, alcoholic exterior, he knows that she and Thor are cut of the same cloth. Her priority now is heroics, not mere revenge, to stop Thanos from carrying out the rest of his insane plan. Loki himself can’t bring himself to care much about that aspect of it.

“I’m going to kill Thanos,” he says, taking a sip of his not-tea.

“Alright. So how were you planning on doing that?”

_yes, brother—what are you up to this time?_

“Have you no faith in our new friends?” Loki asks. “They have quite a lot of weapons.”

“ _I_ have a lot of weapons.”

“Then the famed leader of the Valkyrior will lead us to victory. That was our mistake in the last fight, I think—”

Brunnhilde put down her drink between them with a dull thunk. “ _Don’t,_ Loki. I know what it’s like, okay? You can’t just bottle it up and think it’s something you can deal with later. It’s too big for that to work. It—it unmoors you, sets you adrift. If you’re not careful, you’ll drown.”

The cup breaks in Loki’s white-knuckled grip, the porcelain shattering and cutting into his palms. The Valkyrie, to her credit, doesn’t so much as blink.

“My apologies,” Loki mutters, and calls his magic forward, first for a spell to mend what is broken, the shards affixing themselves together with green light; then a spell of healing, to close the cuts on his hands.

When he is done, Brunnhilde takes the now empty cup from him and sets it aside. Her voice, when she speaks, can almost be called kind.

“No lies, no sophistry,” she says, as serious and unyielding as a hammer forged in the heart of a dying star. “Do you actually have a plan, or are you just trying to get yourself killed?”

Loki, to _his_ credit, actually considers the truth, which is—

_the truth, just the truth_

_undying, you said_

—he is past unmoored, past drowning, so far below the surface of the water that the light no longer penetrates this deep down. He knows he is unstable, knows he is volatile. All-father preserve him, but he is _hearing his dead brother’s voice_ , not a whisper but the faint suggestion of one, like a ghost with no form. He knows, he knows, _he knows._

He knows, but he cannot comprehend. At odds or by his side, it hadn’t mattered before, so long as Thor was there. But now to face the prospect of a life without Thor—

“I have no intention of dying,” Loki says honestly. “Whether that will help keep us alive or not is another question entirely.”

But the Valkyrie nods, as if there had been anything reassuring in Loki’s answer. “You got a plan then?”

Right now, as they are, they do not have the strength to take on Thanos, who had so easily defeated them back when he had just the one infinity stone. But a gauntlet that can safely wield all six stones? A power enough to kill half the universe with a snap of his fingers? That is certainly worth looking at…

It is not a plan, just the shadows of one.

“No,” he tells the Valkyrie, “not yet.”

Unexpectedly, she replies to say, “Thank you.”

Loki blinks. “For what?”

“For not lying, for once,” she tells him.

_oh, but lies of omission are still lies, brother_

_I can’t answer a question I was never asked,_ he thinks before he can stop himself. You’re not supposed to talk back to ghosts.

“Keep an eye on Thanos’ daughter,” Loki says instead. “She’s hiding something.”


	3. a small price / every hour wounds

Something flickers at the corner of your eyes. It flits through the ship upon shadows cast by starlight, upon shadows faster than light.

In the dim gloom of the M-class cruiser, it stops and slides beneath the helm of the bridge, just as the ship passes the radiance of binary star system J02020+0246AB, known also as _α Piscium_ , known also as _Al-rescha,_  as _Alrischa_ , as _Alrisha_ , as the well rope.

In the light of the well rope stands a man and a woman, and in the shadows of the well rope lies a deeper shadow, darkness hiding in the dark, because where else can darkness hide?

 _I need to ask a favor_ , she says.

 _Yeah, sure_ , answers the man.

The shadow looms nearer, and if one were to pay close attention, its form fits the profile of a beast with great, curved horns.

 _One way or another, the path that we're on leads to Thanos_ , she says, in a voice that brooks no levity, despite her partner’s effort.

_If things go wrong… if Thanos gets me, I want you to promise that you’ll kill me._

_What_?

_I know something he doesn't. If he finds it out, the entire universe could be at risk._

_What do you know?_ he asks, and the darkness pricks up its ears.

_If I tell you, you’ll know too._

_If it’s so important, shouldn’t I?_ Beneath their feet, their shadows undulate with unease at the presence of an unknown visitor.

 _Only if you want to die,_ she says simply.

 _Why does somebody always have to die in this scenario?_ the man replies caustically, clearly upset, and the dark marvels at the naivety of the question. Of course someone must die. Inky black tendrils fan out from the dark, sensing the man’s fear, his confusion, despite the mask of bravado he has put on to try and hide it. This is not something she’s asking of him lightly, and it terrifies him.

But the woman is determined, resolute, as one who has seen the future and knows that death is the softer path.

_Just trust me, and possibly kill me._

_I mean I'd like too, I really would—_ A hand over his mouth silences him.

 _Swear to me on your mother,_ she says, after a moment.

And after a moment, the man replies, _Okay._

Then they kiss, and having foregone words, the dark wonders if either the man or the woman knows that one is saying _I love you_ , and the other, _goodbye_.

The conversation comes to an end. Other people arrive on the bridge, and the shadows recede, taking with it the depth and gloom of secrets and hidden things. The woman looks around, suddenly discomfited, though she cannot explain exactly why. It is something in the way the room somehow seems much brighter than before, and much emptier too, when it should have been the opposite, despite that it is now full of the people she loves.

She chalks it up as the trick of the light, perhaps the radiance of a binary star in passing.

*

The dark retreats, and elsewhere on the ship, Loki of Asgard opens his eyes.

If Thanos finds it out, the universe could be at risk. Oh, what could it be, what could it _possibly_ be?

Let’s look behind door number one, Loki thinks.

He doesn’t have to wait long for his chance. Thanos’ daughter is a light sleeper, and takes to wandering the tight quarters of their ship to pass the time her teammates spent at rest.

They walk into the common area at the same time, from the two opposite ends of the ship. Gamora is surprised to see him there, but she is also a far more gracious host than her paramour. She hesitates for a moment when she sees Loki, but continues toward the rations storage locker with determined nonchalance.

“Hungry?” she asks, pulling out two packets.

“Starving,” he replies.

“Feel free to help yourself.”

They sit together at the table across from each other. Gamora sets a bowl of Xandarian foodstuff in front of him, bland but filling, and Loki thanks her sincerely. He hasn’t eaten anything since the attack, aside from the tea that Mantis gave him.

“We’ll need to formulate a plan before we arrive at Knowhere,” he says, in between spoonfuls.

Gamora stirs her food absently, perhaps in the vain hope that there might be one hiding somewhere in the gruel.

“You know him best,” Loki prompts.

“Just enough to know that he is almost completely unbeatable,” she says gloomily, “and that was before he had two infinity stones.”

“Then why did you agree to go to Knowhere?”

Gamora looks up from her bowl. “Why did you?”

Loki shrugs. “What more have I to lose?” he asks, adding,  “I don’t think you have such a luxury.”

She flinches. “What I don’t have is a choice. I’ll have to face him sooner or later.”

“Or you can run away,” he says casually.

Gamora shakes her head mutely. For an assassin of her caliber, she is truly an awful liar.

“You won’t run, because it’s pointless to run. One way or another, the path you’re on will lead to Thanos, because you will hunt him down, or he will, as fiercely as in his quest for the stones,” he says, the words calm and dreadful in all their certainty. He feels Gamora’s alarm grow with every word, hackles rising, but the trap is already sprung.

Then he smiles, baring his teeth as a snake bares its fangs, just before it strikes.

“Or is that he will hunt you down, because of his quest for the stones?”

The chair hits the floor with a loud clatter and Gamora is suddenly at Loki’s side, a double-ended dagger aimed at his throat. But Loki had been prepared for it, parries the dagger with one knife and throws a second at her head. Gamora dodges with a step sideways, the knife catching strands of her hair before burying itself in the wall behind her, and knocks Loki back with a knee to his chest, trying to create distance between them.

She is a formidable fighter, nearly on par with the Valkyrie, but he has bested Brunnhilde in the past, if only for a moment, and a moment is all he needs. He throws his remaining knife at her once more, and this time she knocks it out of the air, but the action leaves her open for the hand that darts forward, bare but not unarmed—

Gamora’s head tilts back, Loki’s palm flush upon her brow—

_A great chamber of stone, cavernous and dark but for a solitary skylight from far above her head, shining a beam of light into the center of the room; runes and faded reliefs adorning the walls, no longer decipherable past the outline of words and bodies; the air is rife with dust and stale for having been undisturbed by any living thing for millennia._

_Here is the end of a long journey. Father has tasked her with finding the stone, or at least a path to it, and the tragedy is that his faith in her is not misplaced, for she is a dutiful daughter. Years of relentless abuse and painful conditioning have ensured that._

_She steps into the beam of light, up to a stone dais displaying a piece of parchment, old and half-crumbling. It is a map of a forgotten piece of sky, charting the lone planet of a forgotten star. The map is priceless, unique. She has been searching for it for so long._

_The map, with its dry, ancient paper, catches fire quick and burns bright in the gloom of the cave._

_She has found what cannot be found, or at least a path to it, and she has made certain no one will find it ever again._

_“You know what he’s about to do,” hisses a voice from a different time, a different memory. “He’s finally ready, and he’s coming for the stones, all of them.”_

_“He’ll never get them all,” she answers, certain. “I found the map and I burned it, Nebula. I burned it to ash.”_

—and she falls away from him, sliding across the floor on her back.

Gamora quickly regains her senses and jumps to her feet, holds her dagger up in front of her like a shield, but it is too late. She stares at Loki with dawning horror on her face.

A map, refashioned from ashes, shines bright in Loki’s mind.

*

Her first instinct is to kill him. The distress call, the ruined ship, the dead brother—just a trap, it has _all_ been a trap. An agent of her father has tricked his way past their defenses by telling all the right lies. Gamora shakes her head, trying to clear it from the recent breach of its defenses. She had not expected Loki to have that sort of magic at his disposal, but he is a liar, a deceiver, and now a _thief._

Gamora grits her teeth, replacing terror with determination. Her father never taught her how to lie, but he taught her how to kill. She can burn the map again. She will burn it as many times as she has to.

She lunges at Loki with the dagger, and he calls forth yet another knife out of thin air to deflect her blade. But she knows his tricks better now, knows how he fights. She grabs his wrist on his riposte and jabs at this throat with her elbow.

Loki grunts from the force of the blow and tries to pull his hand out of the hold, but with a step Gamora twists his arm behind his back. She’s pulled the knife up to cut his throat when his form suddenly flickers, and she is left holding green light and empty air—

A kick sweeps her feet from under her, and Gamora instinctively holds out her hands to break her fall, but she must not, she’ll have no way to block the knife she knows is coming—

Instead of another attack, Gamora sees instead a blur of blue cape and silver armour, as Valkyrie pushes Loki off of her and tackles him to the ground, pinning him in place with her weight.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” she yells at Loki, punctuating the question with a knife pressed snug against his bruised neck.

“Must you all always go for my neck?” Loki asks hoarsely, breathing hard.

Valkyrie growls. “You’re lucky if I don’t cut out that cursed tongue of yours instead. Now tell me what’s going on, or I _will_ do just that.”

Gamora pushes herself to her feet and takes a step back. Behind her, the rest of the Guardians rush into the room, finally drawn by the noise of commotion.

“What the hell is going on in here?!” Rocket demands, holding his gun out in front of him.

“Gamora… who the hell should I be aiming at, exactly?” Peter asks, moving his pistol back and forth between Loki and Valkyrie.

Gamora’s eyes dart to him and then back to the two Asgardians, at a complete and total loss herself. Aren’t they allies? What kind of agents of Thanos are they? Loki had tried to kill her, but Valkyrie had saved her life and obviously doesn’t trust Loki as far as she can throw him. Is Loki working alone then? Maybe the attack on the _Statesman_ had been real, but an orchestrated one? Did Loki betray the Asgardians?

Maybe it hadn’t all been lies, but how is Gamora to know which is which?

“Valkyrie!” she shouts, making herself heard over the din inside her own head and outside it. “Who are you working for?”

Valkyrie doesn’t take her eyes off Loki for a second. “I’m not working for anyone! I’m just after the bastard that killed my people!”

“But what about him? He almost killed me!”

“I saw,” Valkyrie answers grimly. “He’s tried it with me too.”

Underneath her, Loki laughs. “Oh, yes. Honestly I would advise everyone to just not take it so personally.”

“I told you I’m not in the mood for games, Lie-smith,” she says, leaning in close and pressing the knife just a hair deeper. “Why were you trying to kill Gamora?”

“He must be working for Thanos.” Gamora steps forward, pointing her dagger at Loki’s head. She sees Valkyrie’s eyes widen in surprise, too genuinely for it to be an act. “It’s too dangerous to let him live.”

“Is she right?” Valkyrie asks, her voice gone deathly quiet.

“Possibly,” he says. “Certainly the last part is true.”

Her voice rises to a shout, her knife digging in hard enough to draw blood. “Did you help Thanos kill our people!? To kill _Thor!?_ ”

At the mention of his brother’s name, Loki growls, his face twisting in hate and anger, and Gamora thinks it might be the first honest expression she’s ever seen him make since the _Benatar_  picked up his body from the wreckage.

“You already know, don’t you?” he spits at her, venomous and anguished. “I took the tesseract and got them all killed as a result! What does it matter if I thought I was doing it to protect them? My people, my brother—they still all died because of me!”

The whole room is stunned to silence by Loki’s outburst, quiet but for the hum of the ship’s engines and the drip of Loki’s blood down Valkyrie’s knife. Gamora feels her own convictions waver, doubts and questions swarming her, but one in particular drifts to the forefront of her mind. _Surely_ , she thinks, _no one can be that good a liar._

“Then I will ask you again, Loki of Asgard,” Valkyrie says, so softly that Gamora strains to hear her words, “what is it you plan to do next?”

“I am going to kill Thanos,” Loki answers, “and now I know how.”

The shock of Loki’s declaration stuns the Guardians for a second time, which proves to be a mistake. For Gamora, the next few seconds happen in a whirlwind of movement, so fast that they really truly exist only in hindsight, as memories to be recalled and pondered over.

Valkyrie stands and with a swift well-aimed kick knocks Gamora back into Peter and Mantis. In the same moment, the whine of a gun Rocket’s charging gun to Gamora’s left dies with a choked sputter, as Valkyrie throws her knife into the side of the barrel. In another part of the room, what looks to be a cloud of burning fireflies crowd around Groot’s head, wood snapping and creaking as the sapling swats at them, trying to get them to disperse.

Behind Valkyrie, Loki has also gotten back to his feet, and Drax charges at him with a war cry, only to trip to the floor when his swords catch on thin air and green light.

Scanning the room frantically, Gamora finds Loki in the shadows, pressing commands into the console screen activating the escape pod.

Realising his plan, Gamora lunges at Loki, grabbing one of Drax’s swords from the floor, but is forced to duck away when a gleamingly sharp blade slices the air in front of her. Valkyrie forces Gamora back with a series of lightning-quick attacks, and it’s all Gamora can do to defend against the assault.

“Valkyrie!” Loki shouts, and suddenly, a flash of brilliant green is blinding them all—

Gamora, in hindsight, thinks she remembers Valkyrie’s voice in that moment, small and full of contrition. “Sorry about all this.”

Then the light recedes, and before she even opens her eyes, Gamora knows already what she will find before her.

The two Asgardians are gone, and the escape pod with them.

“What the fuck just happened!” Rocket yells, throwing his broken gun to the floor in frustration. “We rescue them from becoming full-time bits of an asteroid belt, and they repay us by stealing my ship?!”

Peter approaches Gamora, resting his hands on her shoulders. “Are you okay?”

“I’m... I’m fine, Peter. I’m not hurt,” she says.

“What is the snake man and the fierce warrior goddess planning to do?” Drax asks. “Are they really working for Thanos?”

Surprisingly, it is Mantis who answers first, biting her lip before she says, “I do not know their plan, but they have both experienced great loss. The sorrow and anger I felt from upon waking them is... honest. They both feel immense hatred for the one who killed their people.”

“Yeah, yeah, but just cause they’re really sad doesn’t mean their intel is trustworthy,” Peter replies. “In fact, I’m willing to bet it’s all bullshit—I mean, what the hell kinda place is called ass guard?”

Drax turns to Peter. “Does that mean Thanos is not on Knowhere?”

“Screw Knowhere! We gotta go after them!”

Gamora steps away from Peter’s hold and walks towards the escape pod bay, now empty. Loki has probably disabled the tracking beacons on the pod, but she doesn’t need them to know where they’re going.

“They’re not going to Thanos—at least, not yet,” she says. “But right now, they’re going after the soul stone.”

“I am Groot,” says Groot in the ensuing silence, sounding as lost as Gamora felt.

“He’s right,” Rocket says. “What do we do now?”

*****

There’s a sting from the shallow wound on his neck where the Valkyrie’s knife had dug in too hard in a flare of temper. With a murmured spell, Loki traces fingertips glowing faintly with white light along the wound, the cut disappearing as he passes over it, though he leaves the bruises as they are.

Loki turns his attention to the console after he finished, but as he presses in the coordinates for their journey, the edge of a sword comes up under his chin, forcing Loki to tilt his head back.

“I just healed that,” he says sulkily.

“Answer candidly and you won’t to worry about having to heal anything,” she says, pointing out the obvious with exasperated disdain. But she pulls _Dragonfang_ back a hair so that the cold steel no longer touches his neck, though the point of the sword is still aimed squarely at his head.

“You’re going to tell me your plan,” she says, “and you’re going to tell _all of it_ this time.”

Loki takes a moment to weigh his options. As much as he despised working with others, he would rather have more help than less, for now. The sword in his face is just another argument in its favor.

“It’s not a very complicated plan. Thanos’ daughter knew the location of the soul stone.” The Valkyrie’s eyes widen in surprise. “I was able to extract the information from her, but she mistook my intention as to why I had done so, and assumed I must be working for Thanos. Hence the altercation you found us in.”

“You were a second away from stabbing Gamora in the heart,” the Valkyrie says.

Loki shrugs. “You must’ve sensed her serious intent to kill me. I was only returning what I got.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “And she mistook you, did she?”

“You know she did,” he answers quietly. “You wouldn’t have helped me otherwise.”

She stares at Loki for a few seconds longer, before she sighs and takes a step back, sheathes her sword away. “Fine. Say I believe you. We go get the soul stone and then what?” she asks, resting her hands on her hips. “We can hide it away from Thanos, but he’ll just come after us again.”

“I have no intention of hiding it away from him,” Loki says. “I’m going to use the soul stone against him.”

When the Valkyrie only continued to stare at him doubtfully, he adds, a bit shortly, “With the power of an infinity stone, I’ll be able to face him on much more equal terms than before, stonekeeper versus stonekeeper.”

“Two stones against one doesn’t sound all that equal,” she replies, still openly skeptical, “and if you have the power to wield a stone, how come you didn’t use the space stone against him when you had it?”

“Infinity stones are objects of raw power, made out of the primordial energy of our universe. They require some tool or conduit to channel their power,” Loki explains. “Thanos found me much sooner than I expected, so I hadn’t the time to forge one. But by the time we get to Vormir—where the soul stone is—I will have made… something, that will give me the power to use it.”

“How are you so sure you can wield it?”

“Thanos is but a brute and a thug, while I am one of the most powerful sorcerers in Asgard’s history,” he says coldly, “trained under the tutelage of Frigga Freyrdottir, the greatest of the _vǫlur_. I am sure.”

To his annoyance, the Valkyrie just laughs at his answer. “I have more than two thousand years on you, Odinson. I have seen more of Asgard’s history than you will ever read about.”

“If you so doubt my ability—” Loki starts to say, but the Valkyrie interrupts him.

“I don’t.”

“My conviction, then? Why precisely did you decide to help me? What is it _you_ hope to accomplish?”

Valkyrie pauses, her turn to carefully consider her words for a change.

“I am sworn to protect Asgard, and right now I have neither a throne nor a people to serve. _You_ are the only king in sight. If you say you are going to kill the one who destroyed Asgard, then,” she bows deliberately, with an edge of mockery, “my sword is at your service, your majesty.”

Loki’s mouth twitches, and he turns away, feeling the odd urge to laugh despite his agitation, or perhaps because of it. He takes the seat at the front of the pod, pulls up the navigational controls, and sets the ship for Vormir.

Sometime after, the Valkyrie wordlessly slips into the co-pilot’s seat beside him to take over the steering the ship, and together they sit in uneasy silence, neither the other’s preferred choice of ally.

But he’ll take what help he can get. Loki sits back in his chair, his eyes closed. He concentrates his magic inward, allowing it to coalesce into form—in his mind’s eye it appears as a series of concentric glass spheres, filled with countless points of light flying about chaotically, randomly. A fitting cage for an object of raw power.

He can make this tool, this conduit, to harness the power of an infinity stone with only his magic. The process goes much faster than it otherwise would, as Loki skips many of the usual strictures, the spells of binding and restriction usually called on in the forging of such items. These strictures are typically to ensure the safety of the sorcerer upon his attempt to tame the wild, magical force of interest, but Loki does not wish to hobble the soul stone with too many shackles and chains, and neither is he particularly concerned about his safety.

Legends speak of the elusive soul stone only in scattered whispers. Famed as the most powerful of all the stones, yet almost nothing is certain of its properties. But Loki knows that with it in his grasp, he can defeat the Mad Titan, even if he’s already collected all the other stones by the time he faces him.

Loki only needs something to help him direct its power; he will suffer the recoil when he must, and only then.

Beneath the low murmur of his spells remains the ghost of his brother’s presence.

_mother would not have wished you would use your gifts in this way_

_she is proud, nonetheless_

_she sends her love_

“What do you think my brother would’ve done, in my place?” Loki asks aloud, if only to drown out the whispers.

Brunnhilde doesn’t answer immediately. “You mean to ask how Thor would’ve fared if he had lost you?”

“Oh, there’s no need for speculation on that front. Thor has lost me before.” _He mourned me, but my deaths did not break him, as his death continues to break me even now._ “But I have been told that my own moral compass is more skewed than most. Would he approve of my actions so far?”

Loki is not certain where this question came from. Perhaps he just needs to hear a voice that isn’t merely in his head. Perhaps he wants commiseration, because he’s never been one to pass up the chance to share his misery with others.

Perhaps it might even be that he sincerely wishes to know if Thor would approve. Ghosts are not always so reliable with the truth of things.

“He would be doing something just as stupid in your place,” the Valkyrie says, though the sad kindness in her eyes belied her words. “Maybe with a lot less lying and subterfuge, but stupid just the same. Thor was willing to go up against Hela at the height of her strength. Your brother’s never been one to run away from his problems, even when he likely should have.”

And with that, the Valkyrie leaves Loki alone with his thoughts and his magic. Their tiny pod flies through the void, a solitary speck in the vast emptiness of space.

*

Every step taken on Vormir is heavy, every footfall sinking deeply into the sand. After all the time he’s recently spent on spaceships, hurtling through empty space, being back planet-side should’ve been some relief. But the gravity on the surface of Vormir is denser than Loki is accustomed to, enough to be slightly uncomfortable even for him. It is certainly far too dense to support most normal organic life, which is perhaps why the planet is such a dead and desolate place. The air tastes faintly of metal, and pools of water lie eerily still among the dunes of fine grey sand, reflecting a sky trapped in perpetual twilight, in the penumbra of its own too-close moon.

It is all about what Loki expected, for a resting place of things that are better off hidden away, never to be found.

They disembark from the ship in the shadow of a tall cliff, the landscape’s only identifying feature for miles and miles. Loki holds the outline of the map in his head and walks forward, the Valkyrie following closely behind him. The ground beneath his feet shifts from sand to stone as they come upon a wind-carved path up the cliff.

At the mouth of the path, a hooded figure hovers above the ground, its tattered robes trailing like smoke as it floats toward them.

“Welcome, Brunnhilde,” says the wraith, “daughter of Hǫgni.”

The Valkyrie freezes in place, the hand on the hilt of her sword clenched tightly.

The wraith then turns Loki, and tilts its head curiously. “Loki,” it starts, “do you come here as the son of Laufey, or the son of Odin, or the son of Frigga?”

_you swore fealty to me_

“I come as Loki, Prince of Asgard,” he replies. “How is it you know us?”

The wraith floats forward, revealing the face of a gruesome red skull. “It is my curse to know everyone who journey here.”

“As keeper of the soul stone?” Loki asks, a knife already materialising in his hand.

“Put away your weapon, Asgardian,” it says. “I am no stonekeeper, only a guide.”

“Then where is the stone?” asks the Valkyrie.

“I must tell you both that the stone extracts a terrible price.”

Loki waves away the knife, and says, “There can be no price greater than the one I have already paid.”

The wraith examines him briefly. “We will see, Loki of Asgard.“

Loki and Brunnhilde follow their guide up the narrow stone path, walking side by side, keeping with the wraith’s slow, deliberate pace. A creature more spectre and vapor than any living thing, it speaks to them in a rasping voice as they make their way up the cliff, weary and ancient.

“A lifetime ago, I, too, sought the stones. At that time, I used to be… human, set on becoming something more. My people worshipped your people as gods,” it said, “but it seems even the gods occasionally have cause to seek power greater than themselves.”

Loki’s cape flutters behind him, as does a phantom whisper of a familiar tread, but he is careful not to look back.

“This must be amusing to you, then,” he replies.

“I find it curious that gods themselves should have such mortal imperfections."

“We live,” the Valkyrie says, “we die. We have only ever been mortal ourselves.”

“So it would seem,” says their guide placidly.

The wraith leads them to the edge of a broken precipice, bordered by great stone pillars on both sides. Overhead, thick, dark clouds swarm ominously, and Loki quietly dreads what he might do if he hears a rumble of thunder, or sees a flash of lightning.

_but I am not my hammer, nor my lightning, nor my thunder_

_I am here, brother, beside you_

_always at your side_

Loki steps forward to the edge of the cliff, the ground falling away before him.

“What you seek lies in front of you,” says the Red Skull, “but first there is the matter of its price. The soul holds a special place among the infinity stones. You might say it has a certain wisdom.”

Loki does not tear his gaze away from the precipice. It is a long way to fall. “Tell me what it wants.”

“To ensure that whoever possesses it understands its power, the stone demands a sacrifice.”

“Of what?”

“In order to take the stone, you must lose that which you love,” the wraith explains. “A soul for a soul.”

_(the voice laughs, though not unkindly)_

_what shall you do now, dear brother?_

Loki looks sharply at the blood-faced wraith, his mouth a thin line. “The stone would have me pay the same price twice?”

“You would forfeit your right to wield it otherwise, unless you can devise of some other way to pay its toll.”

Loki’s gaze briefly flickers to the Valkyrie, who stares straight back at him and rolls her eyes. “Oh, you must be joking,” Brunnhilde says with a mocking laugh.

“Don’t flatter yourself,“ Loki sneers, though if he thought there was a chance it could work…

No. The soul stone would know it for a lie. He turns back to the precipice instead, his expression resolute. He is a god, the infamous Loki of the silver-tongue, a reputation he has earned with his words and misdeeds. That must count for something, must it not?

“I stand before you to insist upon a bargain,” he speaks to the empty air, before a sheer drop and a long fall. “I cannot lose something I have already lost, and so by your terms, I must already understand the weight of your power. It is already a burden I bear.”

_Already it has swallowed me whole, and every waking moment is a century of grief, a yawning eternity of mourning. I already feel this pain. I already know such loss. You cannot teach me this lesson, for it has already seeped into my bones, stabbed itself into my heart. But I would bargain, to prove that I am not unwilling._

_A soul for a soul._

“There is one soul before you now,” Loki says. “Take mine.”


	4. end games

The Valkyrie regards Loki with something she wouldn’t admit was worry. She would, if pressed, admit trepidation, and given their circumstances, she reasons that she could hardly be blamed for it.

She holds the controls of the _Benatar-II_ tightly, her knuckles nearly white from her grip. Loki is slumped in one of the seats behind her, his eyes closed despite that she knows him to be wide awake. The soul stone glows on a chain around his neck, a second necklace to match the bruises he still hasn’t healed away. If he means to keep them as a memento, well, neither of them had ever been stalwart pillars of stellar judgment—if that was to be the limit of Loki’s self-destructive impulses, they could only be so lucky.

Brunnhilde doesn’t feel that lucky.

The circles beneath his eyes are nearly as dark as the bruises around his neck, and his skin is clammy and pale. The brilliant presence of the stone casts his face in a sickly orange light, as if to complete the picture of near-total exhaustion that Loki painted.

It looks, slowly, as if the stone is already making good on their bargain, breath by shallow, trembling breath.

A soul for a soul, was it?

_On Vormir, the sky had opened, in response to Loki’s declaration._

_Before Brunnhilde could do anything more than realise what it was that Loki meant to do, it had already been too late. Everything was still for a moment, before violent gusts of wind suddenly began to swirl around Loki, obscuring his form in a dust cloud and blowing her off her feet. She was thrown back, away from the edge of the precipice and towards the cliff face._

_She lunged, and thrust her sword into the ground to keep herself from being smashed into the stone wall. She raised her arm to shield her eyes, squinting against the stinging wind. As far as she could tell, Loki was still somewhere inside the tempest, but it was taking all her effort just not to be blown away._

_“Loki!”_

_She tried to pull herself towards him with the grip on her sword, when a great crack of thunder pierces the air, and she felt the ground rumble beneath her feet, the mountain shaken to its very foundations._

_And as suddenly as it began, the gale receded, and in its place a downpour began, a drenching, relentless rain that soaked her in mere moments._

_Brunnhilde got to her feet, steadying herself with her sword. She pulled the blade out of the ground but did not sheathe it. Loki stood with his back to her, entirely still._

_Their guide floated towards them, untouched by the wind or rain._

_Loki turned, and the Valkyrie saw in his hand a solitary orange gem._

_“Behold,” said the wraith as it started to dissipate away, dissolving like smoke, “the keeper of the soul stone.”_

The Valkyrie shakes her head in an attempt to clear it, and focuses on the navigational display. Loki had worn the soul stone about his neck ever since, walking wordlessly back to the ship in sure strides. She followed after him in a half-daze, through the still-pouring rain.

When he finally spoke to her again, it had only been to explain the next leg of their plan. He tells her that the soul stone had given him the location of the other stones, and wishes to be reunited with them. There are the three infinity stones Thanos had already retrieved, while another was flying through space from Midgard, with the coordinates of the four stones bound to converge on the same, forgotten planet.

Five, in all, now that they too are making for Titan.

*

When they arrive, far sooner than Brunnhilde is ready for, they come upon a planet just as lifeless as the previous one. But where Vormir had been a scene of quiet desolation, with the solitude of a place that died countless millennia ago, or perhaps never held life in the first place, the dust is yet to settle on the ruins of Titan. Whatever civilization was here is gone, but its corpse is still fresh, still rotting.

Brunnhilde shifts in place, looking uneasily over the outcrop of rock she and Loki are hiding behind. The wreckage of a great spaceship loomed above them, its large, disk-shaped skeleton obscuring them in shadow. The Midgardians had already been on Titan by the time they reached the planet, but they were able to slip into their midst undetected, and will remain so as long as they stay far away enough from the human wizard.

The _Benatar’_ s pod doesn’t have any cloaking capabilities, but the Valkyrie suspects it is exactly the sort of magic that comes easily to Loki, even without an infinity stone.

“Are the humans a threat?” she had asked, looking at the group from a distance. There are only three of them, and one of them is almost certainly a child. “Why are we hiding?”

Loki pauses before answering, carefully considering his words. “They are here for Thanos as well, but given our history they will see me as just another enemy. They will think I have come as his herald once more. The humans will not trust me.”

Brunnhilde is hardly surprised at that, though she suspects that the grudge is more mutual than Loki is making it sound. He is certainly hiding something from her, given how evasive he's been with the actual logistics of his plan. She thinks it might be worth it to approach the humans to join forces anyway, especially considering that one of them is the keeper of another infinity stone. Even if Loki keeps insisting there will be no contest between him and Thanos with the soul stone in his possession, Brunnhilde has no such confidence in their odds. She feels like she is back on Sakaar, watching another one of the Grandmaster’s hopeless contests, and Loki is asking her to bet all she has on the Hulk’s opponent.

But then, less than half an hour into her watch, the Guardians appear, and any sort of hope she had of teaming up with the humans disappeared. If there had been a chance that the Avengers were willing to set aside a little world domination as a thing of the past, it is too much to hope for the same with Quill and his friends, given the recency of Loki’s betrayal.

So the Valkyrie settles in, watching with interest as the two groups clash at their first meeting, before quickly reaching a stalemate and realising they all have the same goal. She notes with some dread that Gamora is not among the Guardians.

According to Loki, the reality stone is already in Thanos’ possession, so the soul stone would’ve been next on his list. If Thanos had already known what Loki lately discovered, and Gamora had confronted her father on Knowhere as planned…

“She would’ve been the map,” Loki says, answering Brunnhilde’s unvoiced questions, “as well as the key, if I hadn’t already taken the soul stone.”

Loki is sitting against what might have been a piece of a ship’s helm, his arms crossed on his chest as he watches the group in the distance. The stone glows softly, like a small, dull star.

“Stay out of my head, Loki,” she warns.

“I don’t need to use any of my magic to know what you’re thinking,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Not when you are so obvious about it.”

The Valkyrie resists the urge to threaten him with bodily harm, and opts instead to express something that’s been swimming around in her mind, the worry that they are just delivering another stone to Thanos.

“Thanos doesn’t love her. That monster is incapable of love,” she says. “If we left the soul stone alone, it might’ve been locked away from him forever.”

“The soul stone doesn’t distinguish between worthy and unworthy kinds of love. He loves her like a blacksmith prizes the best sword he ever forged. Sacrificing her would have fulfilled its terms,” he answers with calm, dreadful certainty.

Their wraith of a guide had called it wisdom; Brunnhilde thinks that anything that would make such bargains can’t be anything but evil.

Suddenly, Loki tenses, and across the plain, the Avengers and the Guardians scatter, hiding themselves amongst the ruins of Titan.

“He’s here,” he says. As the words were spoken, a portal opens and Thanos steps out, Gamora following behind him.

Loki and Brunnhilde rise to their feet, and with a wave of his hand, Loki cloaks them both in another layer of magic to hide them from everyone. As they start to sprint the distance, their cloaks fluttering behind them, she turns to Loki, shouting over the wind, “You still haven’t told me the plan!”

“The humans will try to take the Gauntlet from Thanos,” he replies, without a break in his stride. Before her, she can see the fight has already begun, as the Avengers and the Guardians ambush Thanos, launching melee after melee, not giving Thanos any room to breathe.

“Then what should we do?”

“Don’t let them,” he answers, and runs ahead of her.

The Valkyrie stops in her tracks. “Norns preserve me,” she says under her breath. “What game are you playing at now, Loki?”

They are just far away enough that neither side has noticed their presence. The battle so far has been surprisingly evenly matched, with Thanos holding against all their attacks, but having no chance to retaliate in turn. But if the battle were to go on for much longer, one side will slip, and the tides will shift—if they lack strength, then they must use their numbers, overwhelm their all-powerful enemy. That is what she told her soldiers, long ago. _Your enemy is the Goddess of Death, and so death itself is your enemy. Sisters, do not despair, for there is no more glorious way to die than by your side, and I am certain we shall all see each other once again in Valhalla—_

Brunnhilde shakes her head violently and looks up, scanning the horizon. Her gaze catches on the green blur speeding towards the battlefield. In the distance, Thanos is fighting off lightning-quick attacks from Gamora and a blue-skinned woman, their swords striking at him in tandem. Behind them, the human in the red suit of armor fires blasts of energy from his hands, cutting off Thanos’ retreat. Another attacker slings a web of rope at the gauntlet and _pulls_ , and Valkyrie sees, as if in slow-motion, the gauntlet slowly slipping from Thanos’s hand…

_“No!”_

A blinding flash of green light breaks the rope, and then a wave of green fire washes around Thanos in a circle, throwing the Avengers and the Guardians back. She hears one of the humans curse loudly, the one flying about in armor yelling, “ _Are you kidding me?! What the fuck is Loki doing here?!_ ”

Thanos stands immobilised at the center of the circle, his body engulfed by that sickly green fire. His arms are held apart by the flames, his feet pinned to the ground, but he turns his head to face Loki, who stalks toward him, the soul stone shining bright around his neck.

“ _H—how_?” Thanos grits his teeth, and his expression of surprise twists to one of agony. Loki raises his hand, and the flames around Thanos turn into a scorching blaze that consumes his whole form, their colors changing from green to gold.

Brunnhilde watches as Thanos screams, apparently unable to do anything against the golden fire. The others watch in place as well, equally transfixed in horror and confusion. The fire does not seem to be burning Thanos at all, his appearance unscathed despite that he stands in the heart of the blaze, when the Valkyrie remembers the stone Loki wields, and she realises the reason for his screams.

_Loki is burning away his soul._

She watches Thanos burn for what feels like forever, although in reality the spectacle probably only lasts for less than a minute. A part of her revolts at the sight, the part that still remembers the teachings from her youth, that a warrior is more than her sword, more than her valor or her glorious battles. After death, only her spirit will remain, and whether it goes to Hel or Valhalla or some in-between place matters less next to the greater point that the soul is eternal.

Loki would’ve grown up with those same lessons, those same principles, and then comes the second realisation, nearly as late as the first: _This is the greatest punishment he can devise._

The flames dissipate, and Thanos falls to his knees, entirely unchanged but for the fact that he is now nothing more than an empty shell.

“Did—did we just _win?_ ” she hears Quill ask.

“The snake man killed him!” Drax cheers.

“Good!” Rocket Racoon replies. “Now can he give back my ship?”

With a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, Brunnhilde turns to watch Loki as he approaches Thanos’ corpse. He stops before the body, and around him several of the Avengers are swinging into action, the armored man and the wizard flying towards Loki, but too late.

A familiar green light swirls around the gauntlet, before forming a chain, linking around Loki’s wrist. The gauntlet melts away into a fine gold mist, before reappearing a moment later, perfectly fitted onto Loki’s right hand.

Everyone freezes in place, and the Valkyrie holds her breath as Loki raises the gauntlet before his face, staring curiously at the four infinity stones shining brightly on the back his hand.

Then, as if noticing them for the first time, Loki’s eyes dart forward to the Avengers, and he says, “Two to go.”

*

Loki had intended to let Thanos collect the stones first, before facing him. Let him do all the tedious work of killing the Avengers and come in at the last second, perhaps even pulling some strings to help him along—as much as he hates Thanos, there is no love lost between him and Earth’s so-called mightiest heroes. Thanos can have one stone or five, it will make no difference when he faces him. He knew from the moment he held the soul stone in his hand that it is the most powerful of them all.

 _Let him come close,_ he had thought. _Let him come so close, only to fail._

But so few of Loki’s plans lately have turned out the way he’s meant them to. He thought he could hold off on revenge to make Thanos suffer, but that all falls apart from the first moment he saw Thanos again on Titan.

Thanos killed his brother. There is no reason to wait, and he must have the gauntlet.

The soul stone performs beautifully, beyond his wildest dreams. Loki watches as it burns Thanos’ soul: every moment he’s ever lived, everything he’s ever known and felt, every single trace of what he was, burned clean into nothingness—Loki believes in repayment in kind. The only regret he has is that he cannot make Thanos burn forever.

As the flames died down, he walks forward to what remained of the Mad Titan. Thanos’ eyes are blank and glazed, windows of an empty husk. With a further wave of his hand, he calls the gauntlet to him with his magic, using the influence of the soul stone to call to its siblings.

There is a commotion behind him as both Stark and Strange realise his intention, but by the time they come for him the gauntlet is already on his hand, the four stones gleaming at their new keeper.

In his mind, he hears their voices whisper in a language older than Asgard, older than his magic, older than the stars themselves. They are the first spell that was ever cast, the first word that was ever uttered, the first light to shine against the void of nothingness. Their whispers are as old as the universe itself, all of it promising him impossible, incomprehensible power.

He has four of them now. He looks up, and his eyes meet Stephen Strange’s. “Two to go.”

As Loki starts to walk toward him, trying to decide upon which spell to use of the countless he can now perform with ease, the Valkyrie appears behind him, and asks, “What are you doing?”

She helped him get this far, but she is only a distraction now. He ignores her, and with a wave of his hand, his form flickers, before reappearing right in front of Strange. “I believe I have a score to settle with you,” he says.

The knife grazes the front of Strange’s throat, a thin line of red appearing on his neck as the human steps back just in time. Strange summons forth crimson bands of magic, swarming around Loki, only to constrict around nothing but air and light. Loki taps Strange on the shoulder, and as he turns around, he slashes at him again, the blade this time catching Strange shallowly on his cheek.

“Removing a dead man’s spell can be quite annoying,” Loki says conversationally. “But I can be patient. Would you prefer to die, or merely to wish you were dead?”

The Eye of Agamotto opens, and the Bands of Cytorrak form a shield around Strange against Loki’s next attack. “Would you believe I don’t find either option appealing?” he answers hoarsely.

The bands dissolve with a wave of Loki’s finger, and Strange yells in pain as a knife buries itself to the hilt into Strange’s shoulder.

“I’m afraid you don’t have much of a choice,” Loki answers. He starts to raise his hand again, but a blast of energy interrupts him before he could finish the spell, dissolving into a shower of sparks against his shield. He turns to face Tony Stark, hovering above them, who fires off another barrage, fruitless as the first.

“Can’t you be a nuisance someplace else, Stark?”

“Can’t _you?!_ ” Stark shoots back.

Loki withstands several more blasts, deflecting the last of them back at Stark and hitting him squarely in the chest. Stark dips out of the air, turning on his jets just in time to avoid crashing to the ground, but Loki is already facing off against another spell from Strange, a thousand brilliant points of light falling from the sky like a meteor shower, coming directly for him.

He waves his hand, and the magic collapses into a single sphere of light, which he brings around to crush the large boulder thrown at him by a third assailant.

Through the cloud of dust, the god of chaos stares at the boy, who stands frozen, caught in a state of paralysed surprise at having been noticed.

“I do not know who you are,” Loki says, mostly to himself. “He should not mind if I kill you.”

A knife materialises in the air and throws itself straight at Peter Parker, but is intercepted before it could bury itself in his throat.

_“I said what the hell are you doing, Loki?!”_

The Valkyrie stands between him and Parker, _Dragonfang_ in her hand.

“Move aside,” he says curtly.

“No.”

Behind her, Gamora steps forward, her sword sheathed at her side. “Thanos is dead, Loki,” she says carefully, putting her arm in front of Parker. “You said you only attacked Earth on his orders. Why are you still fighting these humans?”

“It is none of your concern, or anyone else’s.”

“When I helped you escape, you said this was about Thanos,” Brunnhilde says. “Were you lying then, too?”

Loki glares coldly at her. “What difference will it make if I was?”

“Everything!” she yells at him. “I swore an oath to you, when all this time it was just another power-grab, another one of your stupid, miserable games!”

“So you did,” he replies.

“What happened to avenging Asgard?!” Brunnhilde asked, her voice shaking with anger. “To avenging _Thor_?”

 _“I don’t care about revenge!”_ Loki spits back. “I want to bring my brother back!”

The Valkyrie steps back as if Loki had struck her, her sword falling out of her hand. The declaration having been made, there is no longer any need to hide his true intention.

“You realise, don’t you, that if I have the power to kill half of all life in the universe, then it will be a simple matter to bring back just the one?” Loki asks, his voice trembling. “With all six stones, I can bring Thor back, or perhaps make it so he never died. With all six stones, I can bring them all back. I can make Asgard whole again.”

“That—that’s too much power for one person,” Brunnhilde says. “You can’t bring people back from the dead. You just can’t.”

“And why not?!” Loki says hotly. “Don’t you want him back too?”

“Then where will you stop?” she asks in return. “Before Thor died? Before Thanos murdered our people, or before Hela destroyed Asgard? Before your father died? Your mother?”

Loki doesn’t reply, but that is all the answer Brunnhilde needs. “You can’t do this, Loki.”

If she wants him to be honest, then he will. He raises his voice, and says, “I don’t care. The soul stone is bound to me, and now the gauntlet is nearly complete. I am not a would-be god like Thanos—already none of you can defeat me with the stones I already have, and I will stop at _nothing_ to get the rest.”

He turns to Strange, who is standing a wary distance away, and looks pointedly at the amulet on his chest. “If that means I have to kill everyone here to take the time stone, then so be it.”

The Avengers meet his ultimatum with silence, although he hears Quill mutter loudly in the background, “By everyone, do you think he means like, _everyone_? I mean, _we_ didn’t do anything to him, we even saved his freakin’ life—”

“I will kill anyone I have to,” Loki clarifies helpfully.

To his surprise, it is Gamora who speaks up next, putting a calming hand on Brunnhilde’s shoulder as she comes to stand beside her.

“Is that all you’re going to do with the gauntlet?” she asks softly. “You’re just going to bring back your brother? Would you leave everyone unharmed if you do?”

Loki pauses, but seeing the path of least resistance, he nods.

“Give me a fucking break!” Stark suddenly interjects. “And we’re just supposed to believe you, is that right? You want us to take the _God of Lies_ at his word?”

He points a finger accusingly at Loki. “You invaded Earth because of a grudge you had with Thor, and now I’m supposed to trust you with the power to reshape the entire goddamn universe because you’re telling me you _miss_ him?!”

“Speak carefully, Stark,” Loki says. “I know the nightmares that have haunted you all these years, and you can _trust me_ when I say I can conceive of much worse for you.”

Stark flinches back, although he doesn’t curb his retort. “Way to prove my fucking point, pal.”

“I accept your bargain,” Strange says unexpectedly.

Stark turns to him, his helmet retracting to reveal his incredulous expression. “You _accept—_ didn’t you hear what he _just_ said—”

“Yes, and I believe he’s meant every word,” Strange tells Stark, “including the part where he says he’ll kill us all if I don’t.”

Loki smiles, nearly pleasantly. “How very reasonable of you, Doctor.”

The Sorcerer Supreme closes his eyes, and carefully plucks a point of light out of the sky. The time stone materialises between his fingers, before he sets it free to levitate towards Loki.

Brunnhilde steps forward instinctively, making an abortive gesture to grab the stone as it passes her, but pulls her hand back at the last moment. Loki closes his bare hand around the time stone, and a surge of energy courses through him as he installs it into the gauntlet, like a shock of lightning.

“Thor wouldn’t have wanted this,” she says instead.

Loki turns away, and with a wave of his hand, opens a portal to Earth.

As he stepped before the mouth of the swirling blue portal, he stops. “Valkyrie,” he says, calling out to her over his shoulder, “if you had the power to bring her back—to bring them all back… wouldn’t you?”

*

Before Brunnhilde can answer, Loki walks through the portal and closes it behind him. A liar and a bloody _cheat_. Her hands clench tightly into fists at her sides as she holds back her tears. How could he even ask her _that?_

(It is a cruel question to ask, but she can’t decide whether it would’ve been more cruel to stay and force her to answer, or to leave as he did, as if to say he already knew what she would’ve said.)

“Fuck.” The human named Stark stares disbelievingly at the empty space where the portal used to be. “Did you really just give Loki an infinity stone?”

“The Eye of Agamotto can see through lies, and Loki was not lying,” Strange answers.

“Okay, but suppose he changes his mind?” asks Stark. “Maybe he will bring back his brother, but how do we _know_ he won’t keep the gauntlet afterwards and use it to become some crazy ruler of the universe?”

“I believe the Valkyrie can answer that question,” Strange says, turning towards her. “The bargain he made with me is not the only one he’s made recently, isn’t it?”

“No. The soul stone demanded a sacrifice. A soul for a soul, it asked,” she replies hollowly.

Strange nods expectantly. “Loki will use the gauntlet in full only once,” he explains. “The moment he uses it, then the contract is complete, and the soul stone will collect what it's owed.”


	5. the lyre (don't look back)

The ground shakes as another swarm emerges from the trees, the creatures crawling over each other in their haste to get through the break in the barrier. A group of them makes straight for Bruce, a big, bright red target in the Hulkbuster armor, just as Tony designed it to be. Bruce might technically be less exposed fighting in the Hulkbuster than when he fights as the Hulk, but while the armor is surprisingly fast and manoeuvrable for its size, it had nothing on the Hulk’s natural agility, which would come in pretty handy right about now.

The monstrous, worm-like creatures engulf Bruce in a wave, burying him in a pile and clawing deep gouges into the armor. Countless warning lights blare in his face, telling about failing shield integrity, offline systems, overloaded circuits, in addition to the noise of battle outside, guns firing, the creatures screeching horrendously—all together it feels like Hulk’s psychological state, externalised, which Bruce supposed should make him feel right at home.

But even after he fights his way out of this pile, there’ll be another one right behind it. And everywhere it’s the same. The Avengers fight and fight, but they can only stall for so long. They are being overwhelmed, and soon they will be overrun.

Best case scenario, Shuri is able to extract the mind stone from Vision in time for the Maximoff girl to destroy it, but then what? He knows they have to deal with one problem at a time, and while the fate of half of all life in the universe is inarguably a more pressing urgency, Bruce can’t help but think of what comes next, of how they will still have to stop Thanos’ forces from destroying Wakanda afterwards.

He pulls one of the creatures off him and uses its body like a club, wielding it by one of its limbs, and strikes at the monsters with a wide sweep of his arm. There’s a wet, sickening thud upon impact, the noise of breaking bones and carapace adding to the overall cacophony.

It sucks, he wishes Thor was here—

Then a great, swirling blue portal opens in the center of the fight.

At first, Bruce thinks it must be Thanos, the leader of these wretched creatures come to join the fight, and the same thought must have occurred to everyone else, as both sides freeze in anticipation. The black hole stays open, swirling ominously as they all wait for the Mad Titan to step through. Bruce braces himself for the coming onslaught, even as a hopeless despair settles heavily in the pit of his stomach.

But then, suddenly, the blue energy tracing the outline of the portal turns bright green, before a great wave of emerald fire washes over the battlefield. The creatures caught in its path scream as the fire catches them, too quickly and viciously to be anything but magic, and when the wave arrives to him, Bruce closes his eyes and throws up the hands of the armor to protect against it.

A moment passes, but he feels none of the burning heat he’d expected. Instead, he realised as he opened his eyes, the flames only flow harmlessly past him, even as it sets fire to his enemies, burning them to charcoal. He looks around him and sees that the other Avengers are similarly unscathed by the green fire, despite the decimation the wall of fire left behind in its wake.

Proxima Midnight cuts through the flames with her spear and runs toward the portal, just as a figure finally emerges, and it is not who anyone expects it to be.

Clad in black and green leathers and shining golden armor, his helmet of great curved horns resplendent on his head, Loki steps forth. In one hand is a great long spear, and in his other hand is a familiar gauntlet, glowing with the light of five infinity stones.

“No!”

Thanos’ most loyal general screams in horror and charges at Loki, her spearhead aimed right at Loki’s heart.

Loki brings his hand forward, palm facing down. The ground at Proxima Midnight’s feet begin to churn, before thick tree roots shoot out of the upturned earth and wrap around her legs, her torso, her head, until she is completely buried beneath a mass of coal-black limbs.

Then Loki closes his fist and pulls back his hand slightly. The roots contract with a repulsive crunch and a burst of vivid blue blood.

Loki turns to regard the rest of the field. Then he raises the gauntlet, and another pulse of green fire explodes, greater than the first, and washes over the entire plain, destroying the rest of Thanos’ army.

The battle that had looked so hopeless before is over in mere moments.

To say that this was unexpected is a bit of an understatement. The Avengers and the Wakandans turn their weapons warily at Loki, who begins to stalk towards them, uncaring of their stares. Steve and T’Challa stand together, on guard, as Loki neared them. He is not the villain that the Avengers were expecting, but he is a villain nonetheless.

Bruce presses a few buttons, and then he is freed from the Hulkbuster armor, tumbling clumsily to the ground. “Wait!”

He runs to the so far wordless rendezvous, a tense stand-off as the Avengers try to determine whether Loki is a friend, or an even worse foe.

“Loki,” he says, a bit breathless from his sprint.

Loki nods at him, a small show of acknowledgement. “Hello, Bruce.”

Unwittingly, Bruce remembers one of the last conversations they had.

_“So last time we saw you, you were trying to kill everyone. What are you up to these days?”_

_“It varies from moment to moment.”_

Hardly the most promising footing to start with, but if there’s a small chance that Loki might not be their enemy…

“What are you doing here?” he asks. “Where’s Thor?”

Loki raises the gauntlet, drawing all eyes to the last empty hollow. “I think you already know,” he says.

Bruce tenses, and behind him he hears the sound of weapons being raised. To his left, he hears King T’Challa speak. “What do you intend to do here?”

“That is no concern of yours, but needless to say I have no intention of killing half the universe,” Loki answers, before raising his voice to address all of the Avengers. “By my hand, Thanos is no more. I give you all the same ultimatum as the one I gave your allies on Titan—give me the mind stone, and I vow not to harm any of you.”

Bruce hears Steve’s sharp intake of breath. “Our allies—Tony’s alive?”

“Yes,” Loki says curtly, “and if you can think of a more sincere gesture of good faith than leaving Stark alive, I’d be open to hearing it.”

Bruce is barely able to hold back a hysterical laugh, even as Steve asks, “How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

With a wide sweep of his free hand, Loki gestures to the field around them, littered with the burnt-out remains of Thanos’ army. “What choice do you have but to believe me?”

The point is hard to refute. Bruce, trying to stall for time, steps forward, his hands raised placatingly. “Listen, Loki, we—the Avengers are finding it a little difficult to trust you, given your history—”

“I am not asking any of you to trust me.”

“Okay, _point_ , but can you give us maybe a little bit more time? The mind stone—we can finish separating it from The Vision if you give us a chance.”

“A chance to destroy it, you mean?” Loki says with a nasty smile.

“No!” Bruce says hastily.

But behind him, he can already tell the Avengers are changing gears, unwilling to hand over the mind stone without a fight. Even if he is telling the truth, even if he wasn’t planning on killing half the universe, this is still _Loki,_  after all. Bruce knows he’s changed, that he isn’t the Loki that invaded New York so many years ago, but—

A terrifying notion occurs to Bruce, more terrifying than all the ones before. _What if Thor’s death made him even worse?_

Loki's smile grows even wider, as if reading the question on his face. Bruce feels the Hulk stir inside him, finally getting ready for a fight—

But then the portal opens behind Loki once more, and before his skin can even start to change its shade, Loki is gone.

Instead of green, Bruce is pale white as he turns to the rest of the Avengers.

“He—he’s going after Vision!”

* 

It is almost laughably easy, once he knew where the mind stone was. The synthezoid is sparsely guarded in the lab, the Avengers having sent all of their fighting strength to the battlefield. There are only a few guards here, as well as the young girl working feverishly at a console. They raise weapons against him, but with a wave of his spear, Loki fires several bolts of energy that knock them back, unconscious.

Then, he raises the gauntlet, trapping the Vision in a cage of green light. The time stone shines brightly as he closes his fist, before time quickens, accelerating forward, until the extraction of the mind stone is complete.

The Vision's body falls to the floor with a heavy thud. Loki holds his breath as the golden sphere floats toward him. How fitting it was, that the first infinity stone he ever wielded should be the last one he recovers.

The stone slots into place. Loki shudders as the gauntlet’s power courses through him, now complete.

He can make Asgard whole again. He can shape the universe in his image. He can see his mother and father again. Oh, his greed is endless; only his grief can compare.

The ground shakes. The earth rumbles. Lightning cracks open the sky and turns everything white, followed by a great boom of thunder…

_He can see Thor again._

*

The death of long-lived beings is no different from the death of those whose lives last but a blink of an eye in comparison. In death, all beings are equal. All things must come to an end, even the gods, even the stars. What lies behind the veil is a desert from where none can return.

So there are rules, restrictions that must be followed, but rules exist because they can be broken. Freed from the process of entropy, in death time behaves differently, sometimes mischievously, no longer constricted by a forward arrow. The universe is allowed a certain foresight.

Between life and death there is a void where souls lie in wait, anchored in place by a force greater than themselves.

Whether this is Hel or Valhalla, limbo or purgatory, Thor doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how much time passes, if time passes at all. His existence here in this nothingness is formless, shapeless; he is the totality of every thought and feeling and memory he has ever had, all at once, but with no will, desire, or agency. He only knows he is waiting for something.

A familiar voice calls out into the void, because in many ways, this story is a creation myth, just as much as it is a love story.

_“Hello, brother.”_

In one moment, there is nothing, and then the nothingness shifts, and then all of a sudden, in its place is a calm explosion of light and form.

*

Thor wakes with a sharp, breathless gasp.

He remembers dying. The last sensation he felt was dying on his knees as Thanos’ glaive stabbed him through his heart. The last thing he saw before the nothingness were his brother’s eyes, wide with desperation and bright with fear.

The last thing he heard was his brother’s voice, calling out to him in the void.

So dying, perhaps, has left him a little disoriented. He is on his knees now, still, but instead of the crumbling interior of the _Statesman_ , he is kneeling on a grassy cliffside, the dark, Norwegian seas stretching out before him. He grabs at his chest, expecting to find the blade still there, but he is whole and uninjured, at least physically.

Waves batter against the cliffs where he he saw his father die. A shining citadel gleams on the far horizon, the familiar spires of Gladsheimr floating above the water.

And lying in the grass before him, entirely still, is Loki. His skin is gray and ashen as stone, with the lined markings of his Jotun heritage. His hands are flat on his abdomen, arranged as they would be on the funeral pyre Thor’s never had the chance to make for him before, for the previous times he’s died.

He wears the gauntlet on his left hand, complete with the six infinity stones.

*

It is raining on New Asgard.

The first two days pass with a somber, uncertain air, its citizens settling into their new home upon Midgard with faint confusion and wariness. The floating citadel is spacious and quiet with their numbers still so few, only half of those who had been aboard the _Statesman._

They are the ones who died in Thanos’ culling, and they have returned from the realm of the dead by the efforts of Prince Loki, Heimdall explains. The newly restored citizens of Asgard accept the Gatekeeper’s words, scarce they might be in details, as well as the Gatekeeper’s request to await further orders from their king.

The king has confined himself in his quarters, denying all visitors, receiving only Heimdall.

On the third day, Heimdall enters Thor’s chambers, and says, “My king, the Avengers have arrived.”

They have taken longer than Thor had expected but, “I will receive them in the throne room.”

The Quinjet lights down by the observatory, and its occupants are quickly escorted by the remnants of the palace guard to the great hall. In restoring the palace, Loki had taken great care to emulate the layout of their old home, though of course he could not keep the grand scale of Gladsheim.

The visitors file into the hall, one by one. His old allies, the Avengers, stand as a group, Steve Rogers and Tony Stark at the front and by each other’s side. There are some new faces among their number, but Banner is with them, hovering slightly to the side, as is the Midgardian wizard Strange.

A second group follows after them, comprised almost entirely of strangers, except for the Valkyrie at their head.

Thor smiles weakly, welcoming the confirmation of his friends’ safety, though he can’t bring himself to rise to his feet. He sits wearily on the steps leading up to the dais, where in place of a throne there is a raised stone slab, wrapped in the soft net of lights of Eir’s soul forge.

Behind Brunnhilde, one of her companions asks in a loud whisper to the green-skinned woman beside him, “Are we supposed to bow? He’s a king, right?”

The woman ignores him. Before them, the Valkyrie steps forward and goes down on one knee, her fist over her chest in salute. “My lord.”

“You don’t have to be so formal,” Thor says. “I’m glad to see that you are safe, Brunnhilde.”

“As am I, Thor. Needless to say, you’re looking much better than when I saw you last,” she says wryly as she rose to her feet.

That rouses a laugh out of Thor. He pushes himself off the steps, walks toward her, and embraces her in a deep hug.

“My brother rescued me,” he says into the crook of her neck. “He rescued Asgard.”

“I know,” she says, hugging him back tightly. “I was there. I was with him.”

Thor steps back, holding the Valkyrie by her shoulders. “Tell me everything.”

And with that, Thor begins to piece the full story together. The Valkyrie recounts her tale: how the Guardians of the Galaxy picked her and Loki up from the ruins of the _Statesman_ after Thor’s death; how Loki discovered the location of the soul stone from Thanos’ estranged daughter; how Loki bargained with the stone, offering up his soul in exchange for the power to defeat Thanos.

The others chime in to corroborate her account. After he gained possession of the soul stone, Loki and the Valkyrie had gone to confront Thanos on Titan, running into the Avengers and the Guardians, who were there for the same purpose. With frightening ease, Loki had disposed of Thanos, before revealing his true objective.

“I joined him,” the Valkyrie says, “thinking he was out only for revenge. I didn’t think—I should’ve known it wouldn’t be anything so simple.”

“Yeah, it was around this part that he then threatened to kill everyone if we didn’t give up the infinity stones,” Tony says.

“That certainly sounds like my brother.” Thor is more surprised that the Avengers gave in to his demands, and says as much.

“He didn’t really give us much of a choice,” Bruce answers.

“The soul stone had accepted Loki’s bargain,” Strange says next. “It imposed…limitations on what he could do with the gauntlet. I saw that he would only use it to restore Asgard, which I believed was a fair price, given that we could not have defeated Thanos without him.”

The price being his brother’s soul… Thor clenches his fist against a murderous urge that rises like bile in his throat, urging him to lash out. Strange had all but professed that he stepped aside to give Loki the means to destroy himself. _He should’ve fought harder!_ a part of Thor protested. _How could they all have let this happen?!_

But a greater part of him also knows such thoughts were unfair. Thor cannot indulge this rage, no matter how deeply it ran in his veins like poison. With his characteristic guile and subterfuge, his brother had forced Strange’s hands, had forced all their hands, and Thor cannot even condemn their choice. Of all the people in this room, he is probably the only one who regrets the outcome wholeheartedly, save perhaps Heimdall, and maybe Brunnhilde.

Because now, Thor is alive, and Asgard restored upon Earth. The threat of Thanos is gone. Out in the depths of space is the other half of his people, needing only to be rescued. With Heimdall and the Valkyrie at his side, he can lead Asgard forward to a new start, a new home. His people can heal and recover. Loki gave him a second chance.

Loki’s first and only action with the gauntlet is to make Thor’s dream come true. He even restored Mjolnir, though he left Thor with just the one eye. Perhaps he couldn’t resist one last parting shot at his brother. Perhaps that was how Loki liked him best.

Loki brought back everything Thor needed to be happy, except him.

*

“Why can’t I use the gauntlet to bring him back?”

Most of the Guardians and the Avengers have retreated to the quarters Thor had arranged for them. The Guardians have agreed to help with the retrieval of the Asgardian refugees, while the Avengers will assist New Asgard with the diplomatic negotiations set to commence with Midgard’s governments. They foresee no real problems with either endeavour, which leaves only—

They must now decide what to do with the gauntlet.

“We have to destroy it,” Steve says. Despite that they’ve apparently fallen out until quite recently, on this, Steve and Tony are in agreement.

Thor stops pacing in front of the dais. In the throne room, the only ones who remain from the Avengers are Steve, Tony, Bruce and Strange. Brunnhilde stands off to the side with Heimdall and Gamora, the leader of the Guardians.

“You mistake my meaning,” Thor says. “I am not asking for permission. I have already tried, but the gauntlet will not respond to me.”

Tony turns to Thor with an expression of mild alarm. “You _tried_ —”

“Yes,” Thor says, unrepentant.

Tony brings a hand up to his temple, closing his eyes with a sigh. “Well, I guess we might as well, since we’re already bringing people back from the dead.”

“My brother is not _dead_.”

Tony’s eyes glance skeptically at the front of the throne room, where Loki’s body rested in the stasis of the soul forge, but doesn’t say anything further.

Thor has confirmed as much with Heimdall and Eir—Loki is not dead, but neither is he alive. And if he is in the same in-between realm that he had retrieved Thor from, then it stands to reason that Thor should be able to get him back too, even if reason has nothing to do with Thor’s desires at all.

“Perhaps it has to do with the fact that Loki is the keeper of the soul stone,” Strange offers. “His soul is tied to it now, and if the soul stone doesn’t want to give him up, that may be the reason why the gauntlet refuses to grant your request.”

“Should the gauntlet be used at all?” Bruce asks. “I’m really sorry about Loki, Thor, and I’m glad he used its power to bring you and Asgard back, but the point stands that this is too much power for any one person to wield.”

Sparks of lightning crackle at Thor’s fingertips before he can help it, making Bruce take a step back. “ _Woah_ , easy there, Thor.”

Thor clenches his fists and turns his back to them all. “I apologise. My restraint is…not what it was.”

“Isn’t all this talk premature?” asks Brunnhilde. “We can talk all we want about destroying the gauntlet, but no one has proposed a way on how to actually do that.”

“The only thing with the power to do something like that would be the gauntlet itself,” Tony says hollowly. “If someone were to wield it and use it to erase the stones from existence…”

“And my brother along with it,” Thor says. “You would propose something so heartless, Stark? After everything Loki has done for your world?”

Tony looks at him miserably, his mouth a thin-set line. Steve steps forward, holding an arm protectively in front of Tony. “Tony is just thinking of the future, Thor. Your brother saved us, but look at what almost happened with Thanos. Hell, look at what happened with the stones even back when they were scattered all over the universe.” He shakes his head, and stares imploringly at Thor. “We don’t know of any place safe enough to keep it. Even separated, they’re too dangerous to exist.”

“If I may interject,” Heimdall says, “Loki’s spirit is tied to the soul stone. Right now, he can neither rest in Valhalla nor enter the realm of the dead, because he is trapped in the world within the stone.”

“World?” Bruce waves his hands about his head, trying to process this information. “What do you mean ‘world’?”

To Thor’s surprise, Gamora is the one who speaks up next. “There are stories surrounding the soul stone, telling of a universe of its own in the stone itself.“

“How do you know that?” Thor asks.

Gamora shakes her head. “I don’t. But I was the one who found the map to its hiding place. I’ve heard all the legends about the stone during my quest to find the map and destroy it.”

Heimdall nods, and turns to Thor. “I cannot promise that you can retrieve him. It might already be too late, but if not…” He looks at Loki, at the gauntlet resting on his chest. “No doubt the stone will ask for a price.”

But Thor is already walking towards the dais, and with a wave of his hand, the shimmering net dissolves. He can almost pretend his brother is only asleep, if not for his dull pallor, or the deathly stillness of his form. His chest does not rise and fall with each soft breath. The gauntlet lies heavily over his heart.

“Then what if the price is too great?” Brunnhilde’s voice rings out behind him, but he doesn’t turn around. “Remember, your people still need you too.”

“I know,” Thor says, as his hand hovers over the gauntlet, “but I still have to try.”

*

According to Heimdall, the few legends that spoke of it claim that the soul stone created an ideal world for its occupants, in order to keep them content. As the wind roars past him, as the primordial tempest of the universe settles into the world within the stone, Thor wonders what such a place would look like with his brother as its captive. He would be the first to sing of Loki’s virtues, overlooked as they’ve been by nearly everyone else, or overshadowed by his own schemes, the reputation he had cultivated out of pride and self-preservation. But Thor would also be the first to admit that malcontentment has long been one of Loki’s most fundamental flaws, given that Thor is nearly always the first to bear the brunt of it.

Thor wonders if it might be Loki’s brief rule as king of Asgard, erecting monuments to himself, carefree and haphazard in his mischief. Or maybe, he thinks with an idle hope, it might be the days of their youth, uncomplicated by revelations of their birth, before events and their own faults conspired to separate them. Perhaps it is some unrealized future where Loki rules superior over all, with no father or brother to challenge his authority.

To Thor’s surprise, it is none of these.

Thor blinks, thinking that the scene might re-materialise into something else, but when he opens his eyes once more, the stark, grey interior of the _Statesman_ remains unchanged.

As soon as Thor feels the ground solidify beneath his feet, he sets off through the halls in search of Loki. When he turns a corner, he finds a ship bustling with activity, its passengers moving through the decks with tools and supplies, as makeshift healers and craftsmen and engineers, taking on whatever work they’re capable of doing to keep the ship running. He calls out to them, but none of them seem able to hear him, and when he stands in their path, the people part around him, not minding him at all.

When he attempts to grab Korg as he walks past, his hand passes through Korg’s shoulder as if Thor were a ghost.

He freezes, staring at his hand. He looks just as real and solid as the rest of them, but… he must remember this is not a real place. This is a world made to house his brother’s soul, supposedly a perfect one, where Loki is want for nothing and anything—so why in All-Father’s name are they back on the refugee ship?

Here, at this time and place, after they have lost almost everyone and everything.

Everything except each other.

_You’re all I have left, and it’s enough._

Thor breaks into a run, passing through the other passengers like a phantom. He knows where his brother is, knows why the soul stone has recreated this time and place, out of all the centuries they’ve lived. The weeks they spent on the ship were difficult, true, with the two of them working constantly, working late into the night to keep the ship together and get their people to Earth.

Their people, their ship. The two of them, finally working together side by side, as equals.

Loki at peace with himself, with a brother and king he can finally be proud of.

_It would’ve been enough. I would’ve been glad to have this forever._

When he finally reaches the observation deck, it is as he expected. He and his brother are sitting in front of the window, looking out to the stars, talking in low voices. At this distance, Thor cannot hear their conversation, but likely it is some discussion of ship business, some discussion on the logistics of their journey. Thor smiling as he asks for his brother’s trusted counsel, and Loki returning it, his wise words laced with a joke, or perhaps a barb at Thor’s expense—the words matter less than the fact that they are finally together, as they should always have been.

Thor’s eyes fill unexpectedly with tears as he continues to watch the scene before him, and he sees the lights of passing stars and galaxies illuminate Loki’s profile. His eyes are crinkled in mirth, and even now there is a hint of that fond smile curling about his mouth. He feels something in his chest twist at the sight of his brother, alive once more.

Then, with Thor’s eyes still fixed on his mouth, Loki leans forward, and presses a kiss against the other Thor, a light press of lips on his own.

And with that small motion, Thor feels his heart finally fall apart in sorrow, in confusion, in jealousy and resentment and regret. This glimpse of some other life, to be shown perpetually what he could have had, given the chance, seems more to him like eternal damnation than any conception of a perfect, ideal world. To live in a lie, a beautiful, wonderful lie, but a lie nonetheless.

“Loki!” Thor shouts from the across the deck, and starts to run towards him. As soon as he takes a step forward, the scene before him dissolves almost immediately, the floor disappearing beneath his feet. All around him the walls fall away, until everything returns to the familiar grassy cliffside by the sea. The sun shines softly as grey clouds fly overhead, reflecting upon New Asgard’s towers in the distance.

Standing on the edge of the cliff is Loki, his back turned to Thor, staring out to the city over the sea.

“Loki,” Thor repeats again, his voice breaking.

Loki turns to face him and smiles sadly. “You could never leave well enough alone, could you, brother? You just have to ruin everything.”

Thor extends his hand to reach out to him, pleading urgently, “You must return with me now, Loki.”

His brother walks toward him, until he is nearly just an arm’s length away, but does not take his hand. For a moment, he only stares at Thor’s outstretched hand, before he looks up again and says, “You must leave, and quickly.”

“Not without you.”

But Loki only shakes his head, and gestures to their surroundings with a wave of his hand. “Already the stone is working its magic on you, showing you what your perfect world might be like, enticing you to stay.”

“Then is this merely a trick?” Thor asks. “Are you just another illusion yet again?”

Loki laughs under his breath. “Would you believe me if I said I was not? You know how fond I am of lying.”

“There is no lie you can tell that would convince me to leave you behind, brother,” Thor says, and softly places his hand around the nape of Loki’s neck.

The familiar action seems to catch Loki momentarily off-guard, his expression wide-eyed, but he quickly collects himself and scoffs, pulling away from Thor. “Why must you insist on making things more difficult than they already are?!”

“Think of what you’re asking of me, Loki!” Thor yells, a sudden outburst of fury overtaking all his other emotions.

“There was no other way!” Loki yells back, equally heated. Then, he sighs, his shoulders slumping, the fight seemingly having left him. “There is no other way, Thor. The price has already been paid.”

“You won’t even try to find a way to break the contract?”

“Unfortunately, the terms were quite clear. To ensure that whoever possesses it understands its power, the stone demands a price—a soul for a soul,” he says. “The only thing we can do is to renegotiate, and that, I am unwilling to do.”

“What do you mean?” Thor grabs Loki by his shoulders so that they face each other directly. “Speak plainly, Loki.”

But his brother refuses to meet his eyes. “The only way I can leave is if you stay.”

“There must be another way to get you out of here, some magic you haven’t yet thought of—”

Loki laughs unkindly. “What do you propose? Would you bring another soul here to take my place? Or should we take turns every century, eternally switching out souls to remain in this prison?”

His brother reaches up to caress the side of Thor’s face, swiping his thumb at the tear that has started to fall.

“I will not suffer to live a world without you,” Loki says, his voice nearly a whisper.

“But you would condemn me to the same fate?” Thor asks, despite that he must already know the answer.

“I am selfish, brother, and cruel as well. You of all people know this. The stone offers the souls trapped within it an idyllic life, so I would only ever know the times I hold most dear, and never fear losing it,” Loki says, and stares into his brother’s eyes. “Unlike the reverse, I am not strong enough to lose you more than once.”

Thor pulls Loki into his arms, burying his face against his brother’s neck. There must be some way, some other way. Was he really brought back to life just so he can lose that which he held most dear yet again?

_To ensure that whoever possesses it understands its power…_

The stone demands a heavy price. What else will the stone take, short of his soul? His godhood? His near-immortality? What can he still give up worth losing, that he hasn’t lost already?

Thor suddenly pulls away, to his brother’s surprise. He stumbles towards the edge of the cliff, and turns to face the sky. Overhead, the clouds starts to churn restlessly, and then a flash of lightning rips apart the sky.

“Stone!” Thor shouts over the rumble of his thunder. “Hear my plea! I know the price of your power, and I do not seek it for my sake. I have no use for it!”

His eyes search for Loki, who is looking at him in confusion. “I already know the price of your power, for I have paid it time and time again. But if a soul is what your power is worth, then the reverse must be true,” Thor says, his voice level.

Thor turns back to the sky, smiling widely, his head suddenly clear. “I am the wielder of the infinity gauntlet! I want to sacrifice this power, in exchange for my brother’s soul!”

In response to his words, the lightning storm above them intensifies, and the sky turns a deep, rust-orange color. Red bleeds across the sky, and beneath their feet the ground starts to shake and crumble. Deep fissures break the cliff apart, and in the distance the floating citadel collapses and crumbles into the sea. Thor rushes forward and embraces his brother tightly, this time he will never let go—

*

When Loki comes to, he is still in his brother’s arms.

“Loki?”

Thor pulls away and holds Loki’s face in his hands, his eyes darting across his features, as if he wished to confirm it was truly him; as if a part of him could scarcely believe it, and perhaps wouldn’t dare to.

And Loki stares right back, with an expression that must mirror his brother’s. Thor looks just the same as before, as if he never died: the short-shorn hair, the loss of one eye. With the tips of his fingers, Loki gently traces the raised pattern on the metal eyepatch, then the faint scar that runs up the side of his temple. Then he cards his fingers through Thor’s hair, and asks, “Should I have brought your hair back as well?”

Thor laughs, and pulls his face forward in a kiss. Loki pulls him forward and holds him close, revelling in all the signs that his brother is alive once more, that his brother has come back to him.

As Thor continues to kiss him, Loki hears Stark’s voice in the background. “Is anyone else supremely weirded out by this? Just me?”


	6. epilogue

**_Avengers Compound, New York_ **

Bruce takes sip of his tea, serenely tuning out Steve and Tony’s latest argument. He hasn’t been back a week, but if he were honest, a part of him wishes he had gone ahead and volunteered to help the Valkyrie with the retrieval mission.

But both Steve and Tony had insisted the Avengers should all be there as they rework the Accords. In light of Thanos’ recent invasion, the establishment of a newly sovereign Asgard hovering several hundred feet above Norwegian waters, this is a necessary process. Of course they are able to agree about _that_. In hindsight, Bruce thinks he ought to thank the other guy for hurling him into space and avoiding all that nonsense.

And while everyone is still trying to wrap their heads around the fact that _Loki_ , of all people, had saved the day, all sides have agreed to a blanket amnesty for all parties involved. Bruce stops keeping count around Steve and Tony's fourth argument, but at least their bickering feels habitual instead of bitter.

“...Okay, I can push Ross out of the way and have Wakanda head the oversight committee, but the Department of Defense won’t just stand for getting shut out completely,” Tony says.

“King T’Challa will help us make the case for it,” Steve says resolutely, as if asking the king of a foreign country for a diplomatic favor is just something you do everyday.

“Fine, fine. I’ll see what I can manage,” Tony says, rubbing at his temple with a sigh. He swipes his hand at the large, holographic screen floating above the conference table. “The UN wants us to ask Thor about an extradition treaty _oh jesus tell me they’re joking_ —”

Bruce calmly takes another sip of his tea.

*

**_The Warsong II_ **

The Valkyrie sets down the supply crate in the cargo hold, filled with provisions for another journey through space.

“That’s the last of them,” she says, wiping at a bead of sweat on her forehead with the back of her hand. “We have the space, but the journey back will take twice as long. His Majesty wanted to make sure everyone would have enough food in case we run into any trouble on the way.”

Gamora throws Brunnhilde the other end of the rope to tie down the crate, fastening her end to one of the metal rings on the floor. “Your king is a wise ruler,” she says.

The Valkyrie shrugs. “He’ll do okay,” she replies. “He wanted me to say thanks again to you guys for helping us out with the mission.”

With the crates secured, they start to make their way to the front of the ship. Across the field, the _Benatar_ waits on stand-by, ready to launch. Both ships are to ready to fly to the coordinates Heimdall gave them, the current location of the other half of the refugees aboard the _Statesman_.

“Peter and Rocket took some convincing, but it’s fine. They’re still mad about the pod you stole.”

“Technically, Loki stole it,” the Valkyrie points out.

“Technically, you helped,” Gamora replies.

Brunnhilde waves a hand dismissively as the two of them sit down in the cockpit. “I’ll buy you guys a round of drinks to make up for it.”

Gamora smiles at her. “I’ll hold you to that, Asgardian.”

*

**_New Asgard_ **

As Loki lies in bed, his head on Thor’s shoulder as he lay beside him, he thinks back to his memories of recent days, his thoughts lingering on the world the soul stone had shown him.

Originally, Loki never meant to stay long on that ship, not really. Just long enough to keep Thor on his toes, make him second-guess any certainties he had about finally figuring out his little brother. But at the time, Thor had seemed unconcerned with whether Loki will stay or not. Sure, he’d have preferred that Loki stay, the sentimental oaf, but if Loki had decided to leave, Thor wouldn’t have stopped him, would only have asked for the chance to say goodbye.

So, having always been a contrary creature, he had chosen to stay at Thor’s side instead, and there he had stayed until death forced them apart, however briefly. And if Thor had not recovered his soul from within the stone, it would’ve been there, in that time and place, that Loki would have spent forever.

He is at Thor’s side now, and he will never allow anything to separate them ever again, but here and now is vastly different from that dreamlike world. The realm of the living is far more cruel and infinitely more vulnerable. Here he will always have to fear losing his brother. He can only hold on, as tightly as he can manage, and hope he will never have to know that loss again.

Thor shifts in his sleep, and throws his arm over Loki. Loki closes his eyes and huddles closer to his brother’s warmth. Just as Loki will stop at nothing to bring him back, he knows now that Thor will do the same for him; that they're here now is proof of the depth of that devotion. So Loki can tell himself that they will always find each other, that they will always be at each other’s side, and he will not know if it is a lie or not.

Even if it is, he does not mind believing it.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for: Temporary Character Death(s)
> 
> as always, my greatest thanks to Kiran for cheerleading me through this ordeal of a story. the title is from the poem Orphee by Neil Gaiman. :)


End file.
